gadj1976 wrote:The Bedge wrote:I was trying to explain to one of our junior coaches the other week how some bigger clubs are notorious for working the system and making sure they either avoid promotion or get relegated.. he couldn't believe it, and couldn't wrap his head around it.
That weekend, he played the side which believed to be the biggest threat, flogged them, first thing coach said post-game "Yeah we rested our 4x best players today"![]()
Then on the flip side, I've got parents / team within the club angry and asking the club to appeal to the SANFL to have them re-graded to a lower division - I'm sure for no other reason than to win.. like bad luck, suck it up FFS.
Regrading should be stamped out unless there is an obvious unbalance in divisions.. if you have a tough year, so be it.. but this whole focus on re-grading so you can improve your chances at a jnr flag no one will remember is rubbish.
This is one of the issues I have with the SANFL. They should be looking at votes and team lists before putting teams up and down. If they do, then it's not working. If they don't then they need to. Resting 4 best players (who potentially would've got votes either last year or this year, or are in club's best players) should be easily distinguishable and that game should not be considered as part of the discussion around regrading.
To be fair, the SANFL is on a hiding to nothing, there are clubs that want to manipulate the integrity of the comp and there are clubs that just want to give their kids a game. It's flawed and always will be, unfortunately there is no solution while the human element is involved.