3 minute read
Opinion: Ashley Browne
What I’m thinking
with Ashley Browne
HEARTENING SIGHT:
The return of community football after two COVID-affected seasons will be welcomed across Victoria.
Give the local game a free kick
Community football kicks off this weekend, but is the game in good shape at local level?
The AFL men’s season is well underway and, yes, AFLW is right at the pointy end of its year.
But for footballers around Australia, roughly 800,000 or more if last year’s numbers are to be believed, the turning of the calendar to April means the season starts this weekend.
In Victoria especially, there is an impatience for local footy to kick off after COVID prevented 2020 from even getting started and 2021 was ruined well before the finals when the Delta strain swept through the state.
As much as we love a packed MCG and gathering around the TV as Lance Franklin chased that historic 1000th goal, the essence of the game are the footy clubs and grounds across the length and breadth of the country.
It is the players, coaches and especially the volunteers who make the games happen and bring the sport to life.
Greg Baum spends much of his time in the press box, chronicling the deeds and the words of bigtime sport around Australia, as sports columnist and associate editor of The Age.
But his Saturdays are consumed with the St Marys-Salesian Football Club in the Victorian amateur competition.
As club president, his concerns are not dissimilar to those of his counterparts around the country, but especially in Victoria which has borne the brunt of the pandemic when it comes to football.
Over a recent lunch, he outlined some of the issues faced by clubs like his. Some are pleasant dilemmas and are largely the result of the astronomical growth in women’s football.
His club embraced it early on, but after several years, the infrastructure to equally support both men’s and women’s football is not there yet. Nor is there quite enough people power to run things smoothly.
Being an amateur club, there is always the threat of players leaving for nearby clubs to play for money.
“It might be a case of expecting to get paid rather than getting paid,” Baum quipped. But coming off two years where so many have had their income significantly reduced, the chance to recoup some of that by playing local footy can’t be discounted.
Related to that is sponsorship. Small to medium-sized businesses have been ravaged by the pandemic and its consequences.
Look at how many vacant shopfronts there are at your nearby shopping strip. They’re the businesses that typically tip in some cash to the local footy club, but which might be more discerning now.
Across town at AFL House, they are across all this and more. The shortage of 6000 umpires across all levels of community football has been well documented and were a driver for a crackdown on on-field dissent, starting at the very top level of the game.
There were concerns initially about Auskick. Registration numbers were initially sluggish, but have improved.
The concerns instead are over participation numbers for boys aged 10 to 18. They’ve missed out on a couple of years of footy and are taking some persuasion to get back out there.
It’s not that their competitive urges have been sated, but that they have found other pursuits, those that endured through several lockdowns.
The AFL isn’t sure who to pitch to in order to get the numbers back up. At first it is the parents telling their kids what to do (or should do), but at some stage the kids push back. The game needs to insert itself into that battle.
Maybe the AFL should enlist ‘Buddy’ to lead the charge. Who could resist a tap on the shoulder from footy’s man of the hour?
