While not professing to know anything about the strength or otherwise of various areas in Melbourne I am wondering if this change is being done in preparation for an anticipated influx of players post World Cup. The FFV's 2007 Annual Report indicated that they had to turn in excess of 7,000 players away from the game because they neither had the infrastructure or club set up to cater for the immense growth. Hopefully they will get similar growth in the next 2 years.

Not only for the expected growth but for growth that has already occurred.



As a person on the committee of a Victorian Junior Soccer Club with a junior base of 28 teams SSF and Indoor component representing well over 800 players we fully support this move by the FFV.

The first and immediate reprecussion we have had from this decision is that our better players are staying put, as they don't have to chase elite football with a Super League Club.

Secondly there will no longer be the Under 11 and Under 12 over competitive competition to eventually qualify for Super League.

To explain this to the non-Victorians, our Club is in the East at Under 11 age group players are graded into Kangaroo (competitive) and Joey (Social). A ladder is kept and in the east there are usually 3 to 5 Kangaroo Leagues of 10 teams each, same with Joeys.

For the sake of the agruement we will assume 3 Kangaroo Leagues, the top 3 teams and the best fourth placed qualify for the next years 12A comp the Under 11 teams that finished in 4,5 &6 and the best 7th placed teams make up the 12B League and so on through the Joeys too giving 12A, 12B, 12C, 12D, etc. This also happens in the West North and South.

Once in U12A's the top five from the East and the South form the Under13 Super League South East the bottom 5 of the 12A's become the 13A EAST and the 13A SOUTH. From here on the winners of 13A EAST & SOUTH will qualify for 14SL S/E. The bottom two in U13 S/E SL are relegated.

Lately all this acheived was selecting the BIGGEST kids for you team to qualify them through to Super League without necessarily developing them as footballers.
As teams funnelled up through leagues they were able to select the better players from other Clubs while not required to develop players just stay in the Super League.

And the behaviour of the parents at the U11 and U12 levels was a sight to behold.

My Club is looking forward to the new structure were we can concentrate on developing players.



Edited by Arthur: 9/1/2010 01:23:17 PM

I know you have repeated this a few times, but I must say I take this with a grain of Salt. I know my Club and surrounding Clubs have plenty of Capacity and have had so for some years.

We and the Clubs around us have approx 2,000 plus players and the facilities we have we can easily accomadte twice this amount.