By RUSSELL BENNETT
“I DON’T want to be known as Pete Levey – the last president of the Nyora Football Club.”
The Saints’ president doesn’t really want to talk about what he fears may happen to his club if it’s forced into joining the Alberton Football Netball League.
But he has to. Nyora has until 11 March to make a written submission on AFL Gippsland’s senior football review draft recommendations, and Levey and his fellow committee members will throw everything at it.
“I think we could put the most compelling argument together that they’d ever see,” he said.
As an Ellinbank and District Football League (EDFL) club, Nyora’s average distance of travel for away games is 39.6 kilometres. If the Saints joined Alberton, that would jump to 69.4. Levey said this is a huge worry for his club.
“How’re we going to get juniors when they only have to go eight kilometres down the road to Poowong (instead) and the most they’d have to travel is 40 minutes?” he said.
Levey is also fearful about what the move to Alberton might do to his club’s bottom line, with none of Nyora’s traditional rivals in that league.
“Our biggest home game has always been against Poowong,” he said.
“Would the AFL ever consider Carlton not playing against Collingwood?”
Nyora’s Facebook page has been flooded with comments since the proposed new structure was unveiled. Paul Pratt – an ex-EDFL board member with a lifelong association with Buln Buln – posted: “I’m completely against this decision (to place the Saints in Alberton) and believe Nyora should remain in the EDFL.
“If the AFL want to have three nine-team (competitions), they should consider moving Warragul Industrials into the new West Gippsland league and put Korumburra-Bena back in the Alberton league.
“I’m going to watch how this plays out and understand the AFL are just trying to fix things and can’t please everyone, but they can’t move Nyora out of the EDFL – it makes no sense at all.”
AFL Gippsland region general manager and Senior Football Review committee chair Travis Switzer said the bulk of the feedback received from clubs had been “pretty positive”.
“I’m not just saying that,” he said.
“It’s been really positive apart from a couple of clubs.
“There’s no doubt we have to do some work with Nyora and we’ve explained to them that this is not set in concrete and we’ll be working with them to try and come up with a solution that works best for them.
“We spoke to (them) extensively about this and we also felt that we wanted to have three nine-team competitions.
“Geographically, we were looking at Poowong and Nyora being the closest to the Alberton league. The thing with Nyora is that they had been struggling for a while, so we felt it might be an opportunity to look at playing in a different competition and maybe reinvigorating the club. We looked at their postcode analysis and they’ve got about 30 registered players from Korumburra at the moment … but we also understand that their travel will increase. That’s the biggest challenge they’ve got.”
Ellinbank and District Football League manager and secretary Ken Moore said the draft recommendations from the AFL Gippsland review undermined the league’s strategic plan.
“Our long-term vision was to have 20 teams – two divisions of 10 teams each – and to have promotion and relegation within five years,” he said.
“From the league’s perspective we think it’s a regressive step.
“Effectively, it subordinates our league to a feeder competition.
“The crowds will be down, as will our ability to entice sponsors in a nine-team competition.
“It might even up the competition initially, but in everything you have cycles.”
But Moore wasn’t expecting the EDFL to formally object.
“When the AFL rolls something out, if you appeal you have to have some serious substance behind it to get it upheld,” he said.
“I suppose you can wallow in the past or you can embrace the future, and we’ll just have to embrace the future – whatever it holds.
“(But) we feel like we’re being shut out of the loop – we wanted to build the league and we had a strategic plan.”
