A Victorian sports administrator says football clubs are stuck in the dark ages and need to move away from their "antiquated" structures if they want to halt the decline of the game.
Stuart Craig from Sports Focus, a regional sports assembly that provides strategic direction to clubs and leagues, said the AFL Commission needed to review the structure of local footy and consider merging leagues.
Mr Craig said he has been asking the AFL Central Victoria Commission for a few years about what its strategy is and what it wants football and netball to look like in 2030.
"I don't want to sound the death knell of local football and netball, but we've got to think differently," he said.
"The antiquated, old-fashioned competition structures prevent anything from being changed.
"I believe there are six leagues now that are not sustainable, and half the clubs who are coming to us at the start of each season are saying, 'Stuart, how do we wind up?'.
"I'm fielding those calls now."
Mr Craig said that in Central Victoria there were too many clubs in a small geographical area.
He said there were 12 clubs within a 37-kilometre radius of Maryborough and that more clubs should be able to merge.
He suggested that Heathcote and Loddon Valley leagues were two that could be merged.
'We're already making changes'
AFL Central Victoria general manager Craig Armstead disputed that the region was in crisis and said that in Central Victoria alone, there were 3 per cent more participants this year than last.
Mr Armstead said the region's governing football and netball body wanted to be respectful of the history of clubs.
He said the AFL Commission should not dictate amalgamations.
Mr Armstead said the administration was making changes to the way it organised games in order to maximise participation.
In a move towards increasing participation, the Loddon Valley league now played Under 18 games with teams outside the league, and its seniors women's competition wasn't run under Bendigo so it can play teams in the Heathcote District, Castlemaine and Maryborough District and the Central Murray leagues.
In Swan Hill, its women's games all play on the same day at the same oval.
"So, the traditional model is you play home and away, and you play at the home team's ground the next week," Mr Armstead said.
"We've changed that model for under 12 and 15 girls to make sure that they maximum number of participants can play, and they play on a Sunday all at the same ground.
"So yesterday, there was six games played up at Birchip and all the different teams went to the one venue to play together."
Fierce rivals unite to stay alive
In the Central Victorian town of Maryborough, its two long-time rivals — the Maryborough Rovers and Royal Park — were merging as they scrambled to find enough players.
Rovers president Daniel Wiseman said if a single club needed 60 footballers to cater for reserve and senior levels, that worked out to be about 720 players across the region's 12 clubs.
"Last year, there were several occasions where we had multiple players playing two games. At one stage, we had 10 players from the reserves go straight up into the seniors in the next game, which reflected on the scoreboard.
"For us, it's been a battle for the past few years."
Teams battling for players
Campbells Creek Football Netball Club in the Castlemaine and Maryborough Football Netball League is one of those clubs in country Victoria that has battled for players.
The 160-year-old club's dire position on and off the field meant that in 2021, it went into recess as it didn't have enough senior men's footballers.
The club pressed pause in 2021 as it searched for sponsors but returned for the 2022 season.
Over the past two seasons, the club has consistently lost games by more than 100 or 200 points.
Its president, Scott Jones, said the club had managed a 180-degree situation, which he now said was playing competitive football and in a much stronger financial position.
"To be honest, the conversation of merging doesn't come up for us. Financially, our position is great.
"Yes, the scoreboard isn't great, but the scoreboard only tells one part of the story.
"We put two teams out each week and although Trentham won by a lot, they had to earn every kick and goal. We're playing competitive football."
In Round 5 its senior men's team failed to score a single goal against Navarre, who are now eighth on the ladder.
At the weekend, a return to football for Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes wasn't enough for Moyston-Willaura in the Mininera and District Football League after it suffered a 119-point loss at home to Hawkesdale Macarthur.
It has also suffered heavy 100-point losses in five of its six games this season.
In the Nhill District league, Nhill's and Kaniva-Leeor's were last year canvassing a merger due to a lack of junior players but abandoned it ahead of this season.
