Re: Southern Football League
Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2016 9:43 am
SJP wrote:So Brighton Mini and Sunday sides are off to the Amateurs. Is this the start of more clubs leaving the SFL
Can people stop referring to clubs from the old Sunday junior leagues and others such as Brighton as moving to the Amateurs. The former junior leagues consisted of Amateur League clubs (now Adelaide Football League) but the junior set ups at most clubs were virtually totally independent of the Senior and Under 18 arm of the club. Just ask Edwardstown for confirmation of this and stop to think why very strong junior clubs for years such as Plympton has not converted to the Senior club moving above the A3 to A5 grades. I think most of the North East Junior League clubs have not joined because many of those clubs have had a better connection with their Seniors and some may see joining the SANFL as detrimental rather than strengthening the ties to their senior club e.g. TTG, Modbury, Broadview, PNU etc. As far as I'm aware, only Hectorville has joined the SANFL Juniors from that league
If anything the new SANFL Juniors is designed to re-connect juniors with the SANFL competition and their zoned SANFL club to try and strengthen the SANFL because lets face it - in recent years each SANFL club probably has 5 to 10 league quality players from their zone not bothering to play SANFL and just playing for their local club or chasing $$$ in the country. This never happened back in the 70's and 80's and was also a time that the SANFL Reserves was the second strongest senior comp in the State. A decent Reserves player would walk into any A grade side back then and be a very good to dominant player. There are many lads running around the SANFL Reserves these days that wouldn't be an automatic selection for their local clubs A grade team let alone be a stand-out player.
And I'm not saying SFL clubs should run off and join the SANFL Juniors. Brighton has made a decision we believe is right for us as a club whilst not diminishing many on here's idea of desirable affiliation with the SFL and that is 2 Senior and 3 Junior Saturday teams.