Daniel Vasilevski, aiming to lead Wangaratta to a defence of the league and cup titles it won in 2019, believes a condensed competition would see the standard of games improve.

He's also against the proposal to replace traditional substitutions with a more fluid interchange system.

"One thing they can do to improve the league, and this is pretty obvious, is cut the amount of teams down," said Vasilevski. "There's too many teams with not enough players.

"If you cut a few teams down and merged the clubs together that are struggling, it's going to be a bit more competitive and the standard will lift a bit.

"We'd be facing tougher teams each week so it'd be a lot harder for teams like us and Myrtleford. At the moment, we know which teams are going to push us and the other teams that aren't. We've got the luxury of resting players so it's in our favour.

"Heart and Diamonds could merge because they'd make a strong Wodonga club and they'd have a good selection of players to choose from. I know clubs want to keep their identity and don't want to merge with other clubs but I'd say eight (would be a good number) and maybe do a top four or five instead of a top eight."

Vasilevski, the former Melbourne Victory player, doesn't want to see AWFA straying from soccer's fundamentals.

"Everything is similar to the AFL, a top eight, they want to do unlimited subs, an interchange system so we're going down the AFL path," he said. "I don't know where it came from but just leave the rules as they are.

"I understand what they want to do, where they want to bring players on, take them off and give them more of an opportunity to acclimatise to the speed of the game.

"Maybe some players are coming back from injury so you don't give them as much time and you can bring them off but that's AFL, it's not soccer, is it?

"I'd put the boots on again (if those interchanges came in). I know there were a lot of older players saying they were going to play because they can go on, come off, go on, come off but that would have probably been unfair seeing these old players play for 10 minutes, whip a free-kick in and come off.

"I don't think that would be good."

Wangaratta clearly remains a force in the wake of COVID, having thrashed Melrose 8-1 on Sunday.

"It was hard to get players committed to putting football in front of other things again," admitted Vasilevski. "We struggled with numbers and didn't get a full squad until February.

"It was challenge. We lost our thirds side and we lost a few juniors but other clubs are in a worse position.

"Some players decided not to come back, others did other things and the club felt it a bit but we're still in a pretty good position in terms of numbers.

ALSO IN SPORT:

"We didn't do it too bad compared to other clubs."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: