OCLife | sporting life with ANTHONY BARBAGALLO
BARRACKER THE
EMUS STELLAR SECOND-HALF TOPS ORANGE CITY IN LOCAL DERBY WIN
Dreaded promotion and relegation — having your comp and enjoying it too! Why has promotion and relegation; keystones to the success of the best and most popular football leagues in the world; been shunned in Australia? All our major football codes — rugby league, Australia Rules, rugby, and soccer (football) — have never embraced the premiership model that is an inherent part of the great English, German, Italian, and Spanish football leagues. The reasons for this are probably historical, geographical, and practical. With the four football codes all competing against each other in physically isolated cities and a widely dispersed population, there is less competition for new sides to seek to enter the top leagues and less financial imperative to reward excellence and innovation. The “franchise” arrangement of our top competitions, the AFL, NRL, A-League, and Super Rugby, guarantee all teams, barring insolvency, perpetuity in their comps. In the AFL, a total of 10 sides have been in the competition continuously for more than 130 years. In the NRL, half a dozen clubs either as stand-alones or as merged entities, have been in the competition since its inception in 1908. While this continuity is no doubt comforting for supporters and fans, is it in the best interests of the sports themselves as the population and geographic base has expanded so far? The AFL now incorporates 18 teams from five mainland states while the NRL has 16 teams (17 from next year) from three States, two countries, and one territory. With increasingly strident calls to the AFL for a team from the traditionally very strong Australian Rules state of Tasmania and suggestions that the NRL could increase to 18 franchises with a team from Papua New Guinea — where the game is the national sport — how close are these competitions to becoming too big and unwieldy? While no major football code looking likely to be prepared to take the dramatic step of splitting their comp into “conferences” (geographic zones) as occurs with American Football, how big, is too big? While the vested interests from established clubs, programmers, and broadcasters may oppose a cut-throat yearly promotion and relegation struggle, there is a modified system that may appeal to our top-heavy leagues with their overlong seasons. The old VFL and Sydney rugby league competitions in the 1970s seems a good model. Both had 12 teams with sides playing each other in a home-and-away comp.
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With 22 regular rounds and four weeks set aside for finals, the season filled a neat six-month period in the autumn and winter of each year. How do you then cut down the number of top-flight teams without killing much-loved clubs? You institute two competitions with a first and second division. Both comps, however, would have to have the same salary cap and player draft rules. Unlike in the European football models, the way to avoid so-called “yo-yo clubs” that go up one year and down the next, leading to short-term decision-making from desperate boards either seeking promotion or dreading relegation, the decision is not automatic. Instead, the top team from the second division each year plays a “million-dollar game” against the bottom team from the top division. Only if they defeat the premier league’s wooden spooners, do they get promoted. This model has many benefits. Suddenly, every game in the topflight becomes important as no-one wants to be one game away from relegation. Conversely, the second division immediately becomes more important to not just fans, but to sponsors and broadcasters, as the club who comes out top each year gets a shot at the big league. The other benefit, of course, is that if the second division team wins the play-off match, it is by definition deserving of the spot in the top league of the team that they defeated. A multi-millionaire like John Singleton wants to bring back his beloved North Sydney Bears? All he has to do, is assemble a team of good footballers and a master coach in the lower grade, and go from there. Same with the AFL, a Tasmanian team could start in a lower league and work its way up to the national competition, probably eventually replacing the financial black hole that is the Gold Coast Suns, perpetual bottom place-holders with a derisory fan base in a rugby league heartland. The same could apply to both the A-League and the Super Rugby, while only one team may go up or down every five or six years, the appeal is in that, in the end, if your team’s good enough to beat the top-league wooden spooners, then you’re good enough to take their place in the elite competition.
MAY 19 — 25, 2022
A dominant second-half performance steered Emus to a 28-7 victory over cross-town rivals Orange City in Round Four of the first-grade Blowes Cup on Saturday at Endeavour Oval. It’s Orange City’s fourth consecutive campaign defeat, while Emus now jump into third spot in the standings following their satisfying derby victory. The hosts were looking to bounce back after a loss to Dubbo Roos in Round Three, while Orange City hoped to snap a three-game losing streak. The Lions may have been massive underdogs in this contest, but the orange-and-green gave the home side a few surprises in the early stages of the first half. Emus found themselves on the back foot early, after Orange City’s Nathan Ahkee muscled his way over the line for the opening try. Some poor discipline and mistakes by Emus allowed City to continue to play with more freedom and put their opponents under the pump for 20 minutes. But after the shaky start, the home
side started to play some attractive footy with some quick passes and runs on both flanks. The men in green eventually scored a converted try in the 21st minute through Nigel Staniforth to level the score at 7-all. The Emus continued to grow in confidence. Alexander McNiven crossed over the line to score the home side’s second try in the last 10 minutes of the first half giving Emus a 14-7 lead at the break. The Emus extended their sevenpoint lead in the 46th minute after some sensational passing and quick movement led to their third try of the afternoon. George Jackson scored Emus’ fourth try to secure the victory and cap off a tremendous second-half display. Orange City are yet to register a win this season and remain at the bottom of the competition standings. For the Emus, this derby win couldn’t have come at a better time as they prepare to host undefeated league leaders, Cowra Eagles, this Saturday.