AFL Toys with plan to bring back Reserves

Quote:Going back to 'ressies' could get fans closer to the game Rohan Connolly March 9, 2007 Related: VOTE Bring back the seconds? ONE of the great paradoxes of the modern game for diehard football supporters is that while they might see, hear and read a lot more about it than ever before, there's somehow a greater distance between them and the clubs they follow. Footy fans can jump on the internet and read biographies and the vital statistics of any one of 650-odd AFL players. It's actually seeing them with their own eyes and forming their own opinions, and attachments, that's often the problem. You used to be able to cast a keen eye over your team at training on your way home from work or school, something all but impossible these days with round-the-clock and closed sessions. Turn up at the same suburban ground on Saturday and you could come as close as humanly possible to some of football's biggest superstars, a lot harder now from the top deck of Telstra Dome. But it wasn't just about the present. It was about the future, courtesy of that flock of raw young kids with prodigious talent you could watch grow from football infancy, thanks to the reserve grade competition. advertisement advertisement Turn up to Arden Street, Victoria Park or Windy Hill at midday on a Saturday and you knew that even if your team was going to cop an inevitable hiding, you might at least see something in a lanky youngster with a guernsey number in the high 50s. Or watch the champion coming back from the long-term injury take those first tentative steps to a return. It's that connection that has been sadly lost since the restructuring of state-based football, which resulted in AFL clubs aligning themselves with those in the VFL, and the demise of the reserves competition at the end of 1999. The idea of restructuring football's second tier and reintroducing the "ressies" competition, although as yet nothing more than a proposal still seasons away, makes sense on several practical fronts. Most importantly it allows AFL clubs to have full-time guidance over the development of the players on their books from the time they are drafted. But it's also a proposal that works on an emotional level; by giving the fans back some "ownership" of their clubs and players, with a more realistic opportunity to watch them all, and playing for their team, and in their team's jumpers. No matter how keen an interest a supporter has in his or her AFL club, there's every chance these days that when a kid plucked from the draft finally makes his debut at the elite level, it will be the first time they have seen them in action of any sort. If you barrack for the Kangaroos, there's not a lot of chance to keep tabs on those players not yet part of the senior 22 when they're being farmed out to a Tasmanian or North Ballarat VFL team. Or, for that matter, much interest in what happens to those teams of which they're a part. Ditto Essendon and Bendigo Bombers, despite the moniker. It hasn't been a picnic for fans of the old VFA, either. The Northern Bullants, nee Preston, had a long and close association with Collingwood, sharing many of the same supporters, and players. Now the club based at Cramer Street in a Magpie-supporting stronghold is hooked up with the Magpies' mortal enemy Carlton. Collingwood, for its part, shares an uneasy marriage with Williamstown, a club steeped in its own proud tradition, and for many of whose older supporters, the thought of sharing anything with the Pies remains unpalatable. Sandringham has become a de facto Melbourne reserves. Coburg a dumping ground for Richmond. And so on. The alliances between AFL clubs and their VFL partners remain for the best part contrived and awkward. An AFL coach cannot guarantee his players are going to be used where and how he'd like in the VFL. Or in some cases that they're even going to be played in the senior side. AFL aspirants trying to make themselves noticed can play as well as possible and still get shoved aside for AFL club-listed "teammates". And they're just as awkward for the fans, too, their own club's players flung to distant locations and clad in unfamiliar colours. Perhaps it's time we went back to go forward with the return of the "ressies", those spindly kids with the high jumper numbers given a chance to perform in a team the fans care about. The VFA, VFL and the evolution of the twos 1877 ■ VFA established after first matches played in 1858. 1896 ■ Geelong, Essendon, Collingwood, Fitzroy, Melbourne and South Melbourne break away from VFA to form the VFL. 1919 ■ Reserve grade formed. 1959 ■ Reserves matches first played as curtain-raisers to seniors. 1990 ■ VFL renamed AFL. 1999 ■ Last AFL reserves grand final, won by Essendon over St Kilda. 2000 ■ The VFL-AFL alignments are Box Hill Hawks-Hawthorn, Port Melbourne-Sydney, Sandringham-Melbourne, Werribee-Western Bulldogs and Williamstown-Western Bulldogs. ■ Revamped VFL competition begins with an 18-team format involving Melbourne-based AFL-listed players. ■ The stand-alone AFL clubs are Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Geelong, Richmond, Kangaroos and St Kilda. ■ The stand-alone VFL clubs are Bendigo Diggers, Coburg-Fitzroy, Frankston, North Ballarat, Northern Bullants and Springvale. ■ A number of VFL matches are played as AFL curtainraisers. 2001 ■ The VFL becomes a 16-team competition. Tasmania is admitted; Collingwood aligns with Williamstown; Richmond with Coburg, St Kilda with Springvale, Western Bulldogs with Werribee. ■ The Kangaroos forge links with the Ovens and Murray region, playing three matches in Lavington and become known as the Murray Kangaroos. ■ The stand-alone AFL clubs are Carlton, Essendon and Geelong. ■ The stand-alone VFL clubs are Bendigo Diggers, Frankston, North Ballarat, Northern Bullants, Tasmania. 2003 ■ The VFL is reduced to 13 teams as Carlton aligns with Northern Bullants, Essendon with Bendigo Diggers (becoming Bendigo Bombers) and Sydney withdraws its association with Port Melbourne, which aligns with the Kangaroos. 2006 ■ St Kilda’s affiliate, Springvale, becomes the Casey Scorpions and the Kangaroos align with Tasmania and North Ballarat.

Quote:VFL has role to play, says local footy boss Stephen Rielly March 9, 2007 THE chairman of AFL Victoria, Bob Tregear, said yesterday the VFL must continue to play a role in the 10 Victorian-based AFL clubs even if substantial change were required to the existing system. Tregear conceded that the gap between the VFL and AFL had widened to a point that it had begun to fail the interests of both. But he said that the idea of effectively replacing the VFL as the second tier of the game with an AFL reserves competition was not necessary. Setting up an AFL reserves competition is one of a range of options the AFL's game development department has begun to put to the wider football community as part of a review of second-tier football across the country. The project is expected to be concluded by the end of this year. advertisement advertisement To date, 14 of the 16 AFL clubs and the likes of AFL Victoria have been asked to consider, among other things, the merits of a national AFL reserves competition, a 12-team eastern seaboard reserves competition and a 10-team Victorian-based league. All would, for example, involve a return to larger list sizes and a diminution of the relevant state leagues. It is understood that several Victorian clubs have expressed enthusiasm for a national reserves competition. But even more have supported a stand-alone Victorian competition that would give back to the AFL clubs total control of the welfare and development of their players but marginalise the VFL to the point of threatening its existence. Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade was one yesterday who encouraged the creation of some form of AFL reserves competition. But his counterpart at Adelaide, Neil Craig, said he would prefer that South Australia kept the arrangement in which his players, and those of Port Adelaide, were farmed out to the clubs of the SANFL. "We are very lucky in this state to have the SANFL because of the quality of the competition it is," Craig said. "Our players go back to an environment where clubs are serious about playing and winning football. I think we have the best situation in our own backyard in Australia. If we lost that, to me, it would be a disadvantage for us as an AFL club and I think it is an advantage that both we have and Port have." The AFL disbanded its Victorian reserves competition 12 years ago in an attempt to establish through alignments with VFA-VFL teams a clear second tier of the game that it was hoped could straddle the gulf between elite AFL football and the game at a community level. According to Tregear, boss of the body that controls Australian football at a state level, that expectation has been only partly met and changes were required but not so radical as to see the VFL disappear. The interests of the AFL, he said, were not necessarily those of the game itself. "We've got a very strong commitment to our VFL clubs. They've come a long way with us over the last 12 years. We're in a much better situation than we were 12 years ago."