REPRESENTATIVE coach Matt Hard is keen to see Riverina League continue their push towards the Victorian Country Championships following the completion of another successful campaign.
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Riverina League backed up last year’s 108-point belting of Picola South East with an impressive 80-point thrashing of Tallangatta League at Robertson Oval last Saturday.
Riverina is yet to be fully tested since they, plus Farrer and Hume, joined forces with AFL Country Victoria.
While competing against Victorian leagues, they are not formally part of the Victorian Country Championship system.
Hard hopes that can change.
“In my opinion, and it’s only my opinion, but I would love to get a ranking somewhere down in Victoria,” Hard said.
“That’s what we're trying really hard to do.
“To attract players to the area and get our brand out there and talking to the players, they’re happy to travel if that’s what they’ve got to do.
“The timing is right now, we’ve had two big wins in two years so it’s a good time to strike.
“We're number one around here, we’ve got what we can achieve so to get a ranking in Victoria would be the ultimate goal.”
The current representative format, that includes Riverina, Farrer and Hume Leagues from NSW, was developed in 2014 due to geographic and cost-effective reasons.
Tallangatta, Ovens and King and Picola Leagues, from Victoria, formed the partnership to create the unique representative format.
AFL Southern NSW community football manager Paul Habel said the current format has been very successful but will review the concept with leagues before he begins talks with AFL Country Victoria for 2016.
“We'll have a debrief from the weekend’s games between Grant Saunders and ourselves, they'll talk to their leagues and we’ll talk to ours,” Habel said.
“We’re very comfortable with the partnerships we’ve got now but we’ll see if we can build on it.”
If Riverina wants to push further into Victoria, Habel said it would have to be put to the appropriate body.
"If the support for that comes back then we’ll try to negotiate it but it’s about the Victorian system catering for us, not the other way around,” he said.
"It's not just catering for football but netball as well, and that involves seniors and juniors.”