+xI grew up near Taree and agree there's a ton of football passion up and down the coast. When I was a kid we had a rep team that competed with all the Newie teams as well as Oxley representing Port Macquarie. I don't think this pathway exists any more.
My local club also competed in the Mid North Coast Premier League which ranged from Forster up to Coffs Harbour. So weekends invariably involved a lot of travel - A LOT. I don't know if all the city slickers would recognise how much of a commitment this requires from families. Much easier for kids in Newie and the Hunter Valley to enter the system, so to speak.
Yeah it's a huge commitment The local NPL sides compete in Newcastle comp. 4 teams from Coffs (u13, 14, 15 and 16s) go down a Saturday on a bus leaving at 6am and return at 10.30pm. Port have similar teams and a similar trip. It is a long, long day for the kids.
The Coffs NPL side won the under 13's in the first year then won it the next (U14's) and then they won the U15's. 8 of those teams were from Newcastle including what they call the Emerging Jets. (They play a year up). There's a lot of talent around these parts. Teams here.
https://websites.sportstg.com/comp_info.cgi?a=FIXTURE&compID=575996&c=1-10182-0-0-0I'm currently refereeing and doing AR for the Coastal Premier League here and it's a pretty good standard. It started last year but blew up because of Covid when they barred inter-regional travel and they played a localised version of it. So technically this will be the first full season of the CPL. There's 12 teams.
Getting an 'elite' competition was a great move. It's easy to see how P & R could work here too. Pretty sure if my town had a team that was promoted and we were playing Sydney and Newcastle teams I'd be going to most matches. Not only that a lot of the better players from the non promoted teams would get signed by whoever was promoted which would strengthen that side.
Teams here.
https://cpl.football/