Local footy: Suburban leagues make call on player points for 2021
Melbourne’s major metropolitan leagues are united and standing firm on a key issue in community football but their decision has exposed a divide with some of Victoria’s country competitions.
Local Footy
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The six major metropolitan leagues are sticking together and will reduce players’ points in 2021.
But some country competitions will not be shaving a point off a player’s value for the point caps.
Leader Local Footy has seen a document in which one regional football body tells its clubs there will be no reduction next year.
It states a season of service will not be recognised for any players since none had played a minimum of five games in a season scrapped because of COVID-19.
“This is a statewide approach which ensure consistency when applying the policy and has been endorsed by the (AFL Victoria) Community Club Sustainability Committee and will be announced in coming days,’’ the document states.
Every player is given a points value based on their experience, with former AFL players typically on the highest rung and homegrown juniors on the bottom.
Players who jump from club to club also attract a high points value.
A country club official contacted Leader Local Footy to say AFL Victoria should take a point off every player.
“We think it should be applied, simply because we’ve had a season taken away from us,’’ he said.
“All the players did a pre-season and practice games and the season was scrapped.
“Now every single player in every competition is going to have to take reduced match payments because of the cuts in the salary caps.
“The onus is on clubs to keep players together and the easiest way for them to maintain their playing lists and make sure there is loyalty … is to have a points reduction. There’s no downside to every player having one point taken off for 2020, no downside at all.’’
He said it was ridiculous that some country leagues wouldn’t be giving the reduction but metro leagues would be.
Southern, Northern, Western Region, Eastern, Essendon District and the VAFA will go ahead with the reduction, as they are entitled to do in special circumstances spelt out in the AFL Victoria policy.
Essendon District league chief executive Ian Kyte said on Monday that a final decision had not been ratified but he expected returning senior players to drop a point next year.
“The board has put that as their position and put it to the clubs, and we told them at the league meeting that’s what we’ll be doing,” Kyte said.
“Obviously there’s a few things to finetune, and we’ll be going through that.
“But the aim is to reward players staying at clubs next year after this year and bring them down a point.”
SFNL boss Lee Hartman said on Monday that discussions were continuing “but we at Southern are saying we’re going to be doing it, because it wasn’t the players’ fault we didn’t get a season in’’.
The six leagues confirmed their position at a link-up on Tuesday.
Hartman said a point reduction would allow clubs who were right on the cap limit to be able to recruit for 2021.
The Eastern league told its clubs in June that it would give a “year of service’’ deduction for players registered for 2020.
It said it would keep the points cap at 47, the maximum permitted by AFL Victoria.
The salary cap is set to be slashed to $100,000 in top flight competitions for the next three years.
EDFL boss Kyte said last month country leagues could be handed a higher player payments limit.
“Country leagues might be a little bit up because they’ve got travel they incorporate in it (to compensate players),” he said.
“Their salary caps might be 15-20 (thousand) higher and I think we’ve got to accept that.”
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