Local football return: players asked to skip on match payments

To help ease the squeeze on finances, clubs will ask paid players to give up their match payments when local football resumes.

Dingley champion Lucas Walmsley. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Players from at least two metropolitan leagues will be up asked to play for nothing this weekend when local football resumes without crowds.

The absence of supporters will deny clubs vital match-day revenue from the sale of food and drink, raffles, functions and, for those that charge entry, gate receipts.

Match payments to players are their biggest expense and the Southern league has advised clubs to ask players to consider going without match payments when competitions pick up after a three-week break caused by Covid.

AFL Victoria is expected to push a similar line across all leagues today.

Last night Mornington Peninsula Nepean league clubs resolved to restart their season and to reduce player payments by 50 per cent for the round.

The saving will ease financial pressure on clubs and allow games to go ahead.

Clubs were given the option of returning to play this week or waiting another week. They voted overwhelmingly to return.

Southern Football Netball League CEO Lee Hartman said his clubs met last night and also agreed to play in the absence of crowds.

He said they could apply for a State Government grant of $2000 to “help soften the blow a little bit’’.

Southern league CEO Lee Hartman.

“Obviously it’s not ideal but when we weigh up losing another round of football – we’ve lost two rounds plus the Queen’s Birthday weekend – it’s more beneficial to get back playing and hopefully it’s only one week without crowds,’’ Hartman said.

“It was a concern for some clubs – they will still have some bills to pay, like the umpires – but they want to get on the ground.’’

Hartman said the league was recommending clubs discuss player payments at training tonight and “potentially not paying players this week’’.

“We can’t mandate that but it is a recommendation and I believe AFL Victoria will be putting out that recommendation this afternoon as well,’’ he said.

Hartman said he believed players would be agreeable to the suggestion.

He said they were willing to go without when Southern was trying to get a reduced season up last year.

“They committed to playing for nothing. They just wanted to get out there,’’ Hartman said.

“We’d hope for one week or however long there’s no spectators that they come to the party there. At the end of the day it is a small percentage of players who get paid when you weigh up our whole competition … our reserves, Thirds, women, Under 19s, the lower divisions in seniors, they’re not all paid, so we’re not talking about every single participant across the league.’’

As for keeping spectators away, Hartman said it wasn’t the clubs’ job to police the ban on crowds at unfenced Southern grounds.

“At the end of the day the majority of our clubs play in public parks,’’ he said.

“There’s no doubt, even on a weekend when we are allowed to have spectators, people walk through, so we’ve told the clubs it’s not their jobs to police that. Their job is to monitor their own rooms and the games themselves and if people come to the public parks, it’s not for them to police.’’

At an Eastern league meeting with clubs last night, it was recommended that players forgo match payments, but the decision will be left to clubs.

Division 2 outfit Boronia confirmed yesterday that its players would not be paid.

“They’ve accepted that, and they’re fine,” Boronia president Greg Hannon said.

But Hannon raised concern over the Eastern league Division 2 club’s scope to raise funds, with it faced with only four of the 10 remaining matches at home – with this week’s home fixture a financial write-off due to no crowds.

“Boronia’s been particularly heavily hit because with the revamp of the season, they added on one extra game that we missed which was an away game,” Hannon said.

“This week’s home game is a null and void game because we’ve got no capacity to raise money, so we’re left with only three (home) games for the rest of the season.

“It makes it really hard for us, we’re in a bit of a diabolical position because it’s not a 50-50 split, it’s really only three home and seven away really. But we’ll make it work somehow.”

Essendon District league boss Ian Kyte said his clubs had not made a call to scrap player payments this weekend.

“That isn’t something clubs are pursuing at the moment,” Kyte said.

“What the EDFL has done … is cover the costs for umpires for all of the games and filming for senior football. That’s a substantial saving the EDFL is covering for the clubs this weekend.”