EFL 2019: East Burwood promoted to Division 3
EFL Division 3 will be a nine-team competition in 2020 after the league approved East Burwood’s request to be promoted out of Division 4.
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East Burwood will be promoted despite not winning the EFL Division 4 premiership.
The league has approved for the Rams to compete in Division 3 in 2020, making the fourth tier a nine-team competition.
East Burwood applied to the league following its grand final defeat against Fair Park for the chance to be promoted.
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East Burwood coach Stuart Wynd said the club feared losing players if it was not promoted.
“We’ve got a really good under-19s group,” Wynd said.
“There’s some really talented kids who have come through the juniors playing A Grade every year and winning premierships.
“If we stayed in that Division 4, we would have been a fair chance of losing a few of them.
“It just gives us a better standard of footy to try and sell them and keep them around.”
East Burwood’s reserves also made the grand final and its under-19s won the Division 2 premiership.
“We’ve got some really good young players between 20 and 25 years old that need to be playing a better standard of footy,” he said.
“The opportunity came up that we could go up and we had to take it for the betterment of the footy club otherwise we might have lost a few handy young players.”
East Burwood’s average winning margin in the home-and-away season this year was 103 points.
It finished with a 14-2 record and won its semi-final by 45 points before last month’s grand final defeat in the wind and rain.
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There was a gulf between the flag fancies and bottom three teams this year, with Nunawading, Kilsyth and Croydon North-MLOC winning just six games between them.
“I don’t think we would have lost too many (players) but I think, without sounding too cocky, it gets a bit boring rolling up some weeks knowing you’re going to win by 100 points,” Wynd said.
“There’s a couple of teams in Division 4 that have been struggling for a while.
“It’s all right having a couple of those games every now and then but when you’re getting one every second week, it makes it really hard to stay motivated.”
Wynd said the club wanted to be promoted with a premiership but the chance to go up was too good an offer to be turned down.
“We got the feeling the EFL didn’t want us … winning by 100-plus points against the bottom teams (in Division 4) every second week,” he said.
“We were hoping to earn our way in there by winning the grand final but it didn’t eventuate.
“When we lost, we asked the question and I think they were of the same opinion as us that our under-19s were really strong, our reserves were really strong and obviously our senior side is pretty strong as well.
“We think we’ve got the list to be competitive up there.”
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