2022 REPORT – CAMERON HUTCHISON

The official opening to season 2022 (November 2022, when registrations usually open) was delayed once again with Covid-19 Lockdowns just ceasing in late October and work from home orders still in place. Public gathering restrictions would also see our competitions AGM held online once again.

The AFL would also introduce a new database competition system called PlayHQ for season 2022. Which aimed to streamline and simplify these systems for our club users. It did seem to achieve this but was lacking in quite a few areas of administration usages which was frustrating for our staff and made a number of our tasks and some club admin tasks more time consuming. This is possibly expected in a new system and the PlayHQ representatives we dealt with understood our concerns and a lot of improvements were made throughout the year, with hopefully more to come. I must thank Danielle from PlayHQ especially for all her assistance in this area for myself, our staff and clubs combined.

Netball Victoria also changed their competition and registration database system for season 2022. After our initial introductions to it we felt it wasn’t suitable for our needs or requirements, so the decision was made to also utilise the PlayHQ system for all our Netball competitions as well. A decision which was appreciated by our clubs as they now had just one new match day system to become familiar with instead of two.

To start the year, I was tasked as a Superuser for the Outer East FN competitions which was a great experience and allowed me to be a key driver of the PlayHQ introduction for both our staff and club users alike.

Two new staff members joined us for the 2022 season, Matt Blanchard (Netball Operations Coordinator) and John Howarth (Umpire Director), both came with a wealth of experience in their respective departments and were able to hit the ground running, which ensured we got the season off to a great start.

With all of these factors combined, there was an unusual mixture of excitement, relief and trepidation towards the first Home and Away rounds for season 2022.

Everything was seeming much more positive that we would be able to complete our first Football and Netball competition season in three years, but Covid-19 wasn’t fully past us, so nothing was guaranteed.

Season 2022 started as early as we could to allow for playing as many games as possible (given the years missed) and we would also play some competitions longer than usual with 21 H&A games scheduled for Division one and two. Special Covid interrupted competition By Laws would also be in place this season, these gladly weren’t called upon as I initially expected. One interesting change in all our Football and Netball competitions for season 2022 was the “No Percentage”. In the 2022 season we utilised the Head-toHead results to determine which team would be placed higher on the ladder, should two or more teams finish on the same Premiership points (Wins) or Match Ratio.

With the return to competitions in 2022, most clubs saw a reduction in playing participant numbers. An area which also saw a drop off, was unfortunately in club volunteer numbers. Some clubs were affected more than others, but our biggest initial issue arose a week or two into the season and as a result the Division Two fixture would have to be redrawn with the Broadford and Yea club’s football players having to be combined so at least two teams could be put on the field. This situation isn’t new to our competitions but hasn’t taken place for our Senior clubs since 1974 - 1977, were the Second and Third Divisions consisted of a mixture of senior and reserve grade teams and 1956 – 1959 where Wandin, Woori Yallock and Seville merged to play as Valley United.

Another area where these numbers caused some competition alterations was in our Senior Women’s football. We combated this by combining both our divisions fixtures with teams allocated to one of two conferences. Each team would play their own conference opponents twice and teams from the other conference at least once, with all match results counting toward ladder positions and then each conference would split for their own finals series and premiership.