In yesterday’s The Border Mail, Corowa-Rutherglen coach Peter Tossol said the Ovens and Murray league should consider introducing a points system to control recruiting and spending, therefore helping small-town clubs compete.

Yesterday, Sunraysia league president Peter Congress said such a system, introduced five years ago, had consolidated his competition’s long-term future.

“The bottom line is, we still exist as a viable league,” Congress said yesterday when asked about the system’s effects on the competition.

“When we introduced the points system, more than half our clubs were trading insolvent, but what it’s done is ensured clubs don’t go out and overspend”.

The Sunraysia system allocates ratings to each player on a club’s list, with a club’s collective points capped at 22 points each year.

The maximum rating — five points — is only allocated to intra-league recruits aged 19 years or younger, who have played less than 50 senior or reserve games, with recruits from major leagues, such as the VFL, assigned four points.

To reward loyalty, once a player has been at a club for a year, their value is decreased by one point each season.

However, in an attempt to even up the league, clubs from outlying areas are awarded extra points, with clubs that miss the finals from the previous year also given extra points.

Congress said all eight Sunraysia league clubs supported the points system when it was introduced in 2005.

“The clubs were unanimous that we needed to do something,” he said.

“It’s still a work in progress, it doesn’t stop clubs recruiting, but it basically means they can’t bring in 12 or 13 players.

“Clubs used to go out and recruit a dozen or so players and in most cases they overpaid them, and the locals were being overlooked.

“But we’ve now got our young locals on display, playing senior footy.

“We don’t stop the clubs recruiting, they can still bring in a couple of guns, but clubs now have to manage their playing lists.”

The Hume league also has a points system which has been running successfully for several years.