What does gentrification mean for the long term future of the standalone clubs we don’t have the luxury of being a national brand like the afl clubs so what can vfl clubs do to make sure they have continued support even though the suburbs demographic that they represent changing for example williamstown has become probably the most upper class area of western Melbourne.

Paul Amy has penned another excellent article (behind a paywall) on the dangers that clubs including Coburg face in the modern landscape and called on the VFA clubs to honour the name of the competition.

If I can find a link to the article, I'll post it up.  It appeared in Mondays Herald-Sun. 

Paul Amy has broken the story 

A sad day dor Victorian football

Frankston had the Geddes Medal count last night.....

3rd - Jackson Voss

2nd - Taine Barlow

1st - Tom Blamires

Congrats to Tom on a great season. Amazed to hear he has never played midfield prior to this season!

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 21

Footscray vs Southport at Ikon Park 2:15pm 7mate/7plus

[Edit: apologies for odd formatting, I have absolutely no idea why the word "Body" is displaying at the top of the body of the post and cannot figure out how to remove it]

These are the results the club has announced so far:

VFL:

Jack McFarlane Medal (Best and Fairest): Tom Hird

Best and Fairest Runner-Up: Harvey Hooper

Ted & Rob Freyer Memorial Trophy (Most Determined): Tom Graham

Tom Lahiff Trophy (Spirit of the Borough): Dyson Turner-Heppell

Best First-Year Player: AJ Kuol Mun

Bob Bonnett-Fred Cook Leading Goalkicker: Dom Bedendo

VFLW:

Best and Fairest: Ava Seton

Best and Fairest Runner-Up Mia Caffry

Coaches' Award: Meg Buchanan

Spirit of the Borough: Olivia Barton

Development Player: Nicola Davidson

Leading Goalkicker: Kaitlyn O'Keefe

VBFL:

Best and Fairest: David Gauci

Best and Fairest Runner-Up: Penelope Bunn

Best Team Player: Bridget Jolley

Leading Goalkicker: David Gauci

Congratulations to all the winners!

Port Melbourne Captain and two time premiership player Harvey Hooper has announced that the 2025 season will be his last.

His leadership and efforts at the Borough won't be easily forgotten as he has been a first class competitor in the VFA/VFL over the last decade. It's fitting that his performance representing the VFL this yes against South Australia was instrumental in the Big V ending a long losing streak. 

Well done Hoops on a great career. 

Not a lot of detail in this article, but apparently Darebin has serious funding issues, to the point that the future of the club's VFLW team may be in doubt:

https://www.afl.com.au/aflw/news/1415862/womens-footy-factory-under-thr…

The conclusion of the article hints at the possibility of an alignment with Richmond, who apparently want to get back into the VFLW after ending their VFLW alignment with Port Melbourne. From a Port Melbourne perspective I'm not particularly impressed with Richmond ending the VFLW alignment and now wanting to come back in (though I don't know any details of what went into the decision). But if this does happen (all the article says is that Darebin are "understood" to be "open to the idea" of such an alignment - but I did wonder if that appearing in an official AFL article means the AFL likes the idea), hopefully it works out for Darebin.

I do wonder whether a Richmond alignment with Darebin in the VFLW would cause problems for Preston. Darebin's future in the VFLW would be even more uncertain if Preston doesn't survive, given the current relation between the two clubs, while at the same time the grant for upgrading the lights for night training at Preston depended on their connection to Darebin since it had something to do with supporting women's sports. I was trying to figure out if the grant had already happened or not, and this was all I could find:

https://www.gedkearney.org.au/media-news/media-releases-cooper-news/del…

So Preston actually getting the grant may depend on Darebin continuing to use the Preston City Oval next season. I don't know whether an alignment with Richmond would preclude that.

It's a real shame for Darebin to be having such serious financial problems as they were showing improvement on the field. I'm still surprised they lost to Geelong in the last round, thereby missing out on finals - it was a close loss, so they likely would have won if Ange Gogos had been able to play that weekend, but unfortunately she wasn't.

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 13

2nd Preliminary Final

Southport vs Frankston  at Fankhauser Reserve 11:25am AFL Live Stream

1st Preliminary Final

Footscray vs Box Hill Hawks at Whitten Oval 2:10pm 7mate/7plus

Once again Frankston are re-signing players before the season is even done, so time to get the chat going I guess. 

Re-Signed:

- Noah Gown - Will Hamil - Lochie Reidy

- Trent Mynott - Kobe Askew - Tyson Milne

- Taj Campbell-Farrell - Tomoya Owens - Corey Ellison

- Harrison Jones - Joe Lloyd - Tarkyn O'Leary

- Bailey Lambert - Jackson Voss - Darby Hipwell 

- Nick Burke - Seb Quirk - Tom Blamires

- Blake O'Leary - Ollie Moran - George Grey

- Kade De La Rue

In: 

- Patrick Dozzi - Henry Berenger - Will Derrington

- Tom Hofert - Jamie Gilchrist

Out:

- Jess McManus (Mt Eliza) - Tom Murphy (Pines) - Justin Davies (Cheltenham)

- Lachie Riley (Sandringham) - Josh Smith (Langwarrin) - Matt Johnson (Langwarrin)