A new-look senior ladies competition involving all 12 AWFA clubs has been suggested as a possible solution to the current issues facing women’s soccer on the Border.
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Albury City senior women’s coach Robert Brown would prefer to see every outfit back in the top division, with a top-six, bottom-six format giving all clubs the opportunity to play for silverware.
“It can be argued that it makes the competition stronger with only six or seven there, but there are senior players that are now playing reserves,” he said.
“Hotspurs said a few weeks ago they would prefer to have one comp and in a way I would.
“There’s various scenarios, you could always have one comp and halfway through the season the bottom six play each other for the rest of the year and the top six play-off in the top and at the end of the season you have a cup and a plate final.
“You still have a full senior competition, rather than having six or sevens teams.
“There’s all sorts of options, but the association has got to work through those, not me.
“There are a number of issues to work through, I don’t think it’s an easy solution.”
Brown admits the decisions made this season could potentially impact on women’s soccer in the years to come.
“The decisions last year of certain teams to play so many players from seniors back in reserves has now given other clubs the ability to this year say ‘they did it last year, we won’t even field a senior team, we’ll just play reserves’,” Brown said.
“I think if things had been done differently last year, then maybe we wouldn’t have had so many people wanting to step down this year.”
The association hopes to have a new draw ready after the Easter bye, but Brown knows it’s far from ideal for City and fellow clubs that have senior and reserve women’s teams.
“Obviously it makes it difficult if you’ve got coaches that might be involved in coaching reserve ladies and senior ladies if there’s special draws in different spots,” Brown said.
“Potentially bench players will be playing reserves and will be part of the senior squad and have to get from one game to the other.
“It’s a fair bit to think about with a special draw, whether they need to look at changing the time of senior ladies to give players and coaches more time to get from ground to ground.”
Brown and Melrose men’s coach Kade Rixon are among those not against the possibility of changing senior matches to a Saturday.
Beau Greenway
I like to tell the stories of great people in our communities. Email: beau.greenway@austcommunitymedia.com.au
I like to tell the stories of great people in our communities. Email: beau.greenway@austcommunitymedia.com.au
