TWO leading Riverina League figures have suggested the possibility of a 'case by case' points system being adopted to help clubs who don't have the junior bases or geographic advantages of their rivals.
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The Daily Advertiser reported this week players recruited from the AFL Riverina Premier competition and AFL Canberra could be worth an extra point on their players points systems in 2022, with a higher than usual number of capital-based talent joining Riverina clubs this year.
AFL Southern NSW is keen to give clubs as much competitive incentive as possible to nurture their junior pathways.
But Ganmain-Grong Grong-Matong president Jason Hamblin said it's easier for Wagga-based clubs to keep their juniors in town through more job opportunities than clubs in smaller surrounding towns.
He suggested that, where appropriate, clubs in towns located some distance from Wagga could be given assistance through the player points allocation.
"Teams like Narrandera, the (Northern) Jets, Barellan, the further the distance they are from Wagga maybe they get more points, just because of their geographical positioning," he said.
"People go to Wagga for Uni, and in those surrounding towns juniors move. I agree there should be allowances to perhaps help them have an extra point or two.
"There is wiggle room in the points system, I think. The teams that end up down the bottom the previous season deserve an extra one or two points, that allows them to bring players in and try and work their way up the ladder."
Turvey Park coach Michael Mazzocchi is an advocate of the points system, but said it's important to find a balance between giving opportunities to juniors and attracting premium talent to the local leagues.
"I think the points system works, the AFL wants to promote juniors, the system definitely helps do that and I'm 100 per cent behind that," he said.
"The only thing I'm wary of is you do want your local competition to be as high a standard as possible, and you want the ability to bring in top end footballers.
"That's the balancing act we need to work on, and you don't want the rich clubs getting really strong and the poor clubs not.
"But I don't think we have that as much in our area, no one club has won a string of premierships in a row."
Mazzocchi agreed a flexible approach to the points system to ensure clubs don't remain rooted to the bottom of the ladder could have merit.
"Some clubs down the bottom, you want to see them have their turn (to have success)," he said.
"You need those clubs to be able to recruit to get back to the top, whereas under the current system I can't see the bottom teams being able to recruit enough footballers to get back to the top.
"Some of those out-of-town teams aren't going to have those number of juniors coming through compared to Wagga clubs. They need to recruit to be competitive, the lifeblood of the towns is community football and you want to be successful to keep that energy and enthusiasm around it.
"I do think there has to be a case-by-case approach. I don't think it's as easy as saying an out of town team should get certain amount of points extra, I don't think it's as simple as that, but I do think it's a case-by-case thing where we may think they need two or three extra points to recruit a couple of extra footballers.
"The way it's set up those bottom clubs are going to need to regenerate over four to five years and it's very hard to hold onto your players over that period."
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