“We’ll lose players”: Premier Division club president has dire concerns over delaying EFNL season
One EFNL Premier Division club president has implored clubs to “roll your sleeves up”, expressing grave concerns about the state of the league if the season is canned.
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Doncaster East president Peter Sowersby has leapt to the defence of season 2020, voicing concerns about the state of the competition and its clubs should it be cancelled prematurely.
The Premier Division club made its long-awaited step up to the league’s top division last season, winning the Division 1 premiership.
Clubs are split over whether to play this season, and league transfers remain open until June 30.
“Just say the EFNL call it off tomorrow, then there’s other leagues that are still going ahead … the clubs that are saying they want to call it off, that’s fine, you’ll lose 90 per cent of your players to other clubs,” Sowersby said.
“The EFL, I understand where they’re coming from – they’ve got to listen to clubs. But clubs have to understand, if we call off the season and they don’t allow players to train, we’ll lose all our quality players to other comps.
“You might even lose clubs to other comps, because clubs are that keen to play, I can assure you.”
Sowersby said club officials had been too quick to dismiss a potential season and warned 2021 may bring more of the same if they don’t begin to adjust to the new norm.
“I don’t know what the rush is with calling off seasons and why we can’t wait,” he said.
“If the government says we can’t play local footy, well that’s across Victoria, isn’t it? We accept that.
“But until they say that, I don’t know why every club shouldn’t be working in the protocols because from 2020 to 2021, they’re not going to have a (coronavirus) vaccine, so nothing’s going to be any different.”
The Lions have begun to adjust to the COVID landscape and will soon begin using an app that logs each individual that comes to its home ground, Zerbes Reserve. The app does not follow that person’s movements once they leave the ground.
“We’ve got an app that our club’s going to use that’s called 1Breadcrumb – anyone that walks into Zerbes, they fill in a questionnaire and it checks you in and out,” Sowersby said.
“It doesn’t follow you after Zerbes. We’re obviously doing that so we can track who’s come through the gates, whether that’s training, a committee member or a player.”
Salary caps have been a hot topic of discussion for clubs and the Lions’ boss said the only way out for clubs was to “roll your sleeves up”.
“What frustrates me a little, everyone’s saying salary caps and all that sort of stuff, my view is they should pro rata it. You don’t have to spend the salary cap — if you can only afford to spend $20,000, unfortunately that’s bad luck,” he said.
“(Ten years ago) our club didn’t go ‘this is all too hard and unfair’, what we did as a club was build our sponsorships up so we can compete with those (higher paying) clubs.
“It’s going to be unusual for years to come, so you’ve just got to roll your sleeves up and do the hard yards. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, a lot of people think it’s easy to just throw your hands up.”
Crowd attendance is shaping as the linchpin as to whether local football will return this season, but the Premier Division club president called for sections around grounds to limit patron capacity.
Sowersby implored a return, for the sake of players and supporters.
“The community needs it, our players need it — we’ve had a lot of guys lose jobs,” he said.
“Not for the money side of things but back to normality. Our committee members, our staunch supporters, they need it.
“People are saying it’s too much, too hard for people to do, you’ll get more people volunteering now because they know how much they’ve missed it.”
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