Disgusting news out of Canberra this morning:
capitalfootball.com.au
Key summary:
- Abolishing of 2nd division (Capital Premier League)
- Expansion of National Premier League from 8 to 10 clubs
- Removal of Riverina clubs (Yoogali SC and Wagga City Wanderers) from Capital Football
- Introduce a representative weekend (juniors and first grade)
- Player payment cap to be introduced into NPL Men and Women
- NPL M & W promotion/relegation play off introduced
- CF to engage with FA about developing our own NPL criteria.
Key takeaway from me is this one:
Mostly that the review committee obviously has decided to follow the lead of specific clubs (not named above), to exclude the Riverina clubs. Apparently because they don't like to travel.
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Understand why they'd say this for youth level (which at the moment was only Wagga anyways) and womens level - as Wagga had already pulled out - but they specifically say why it shouldn't be an issue at Men's / NPL level, and gone and rejected that anyways.
Someone just pointed this out to me that I missed as well. Considering 'travel' is cited as the main reason that Yoogali + Wagga will be removed from Capital Football competitions - this is thrown in as a recommendation:
Sorry.. this gets even more hilarious the more I read into it/discuss locally.
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For reference - and you all know I'll defend referees until the end of the world - Capital Football pays NPL referees $250 per game
(Assistant Referees get half of that each on top).
Oh, and now I've read how the promotion system works - so convoluted ffs
- Community League 1 (CL1) clubs need to declare interest for promotion prior to the start of the season. They then have until 1 March to meet NPL club licensing criteria.
- If the CL1 Premier is not eligible for promotion (as above), there will be no automatic promotion.
- If the CL1 Premier is not promoted, but the 2nd placed CL1 team meets NPL club licensing criteria, a single-legged promotion playoff will be scheduled after the NPL Grand Final between the 10th places NPL team and the 2nd places CL1 team (first grade only)
- If both 1st and 2nd in CL1 do not meet NPL club licensing criteria, there will be no promotion/relegation
again - contradicts things they say earlier in the review, because they say:
essentially, no one outside the 10 clubs will meet NPL licencing club criteria ever, so there never will be any of this promotion/relegation
Very clear this is a ploy from clubs who don't want to travel, and have openly said so in the past (from memory - O'Connor Knights, Canberra Olympic) and clubs that have been relegated, and haven't been able to earn their way back in yet (Belconnen United, West Canberra Wanderers, Canberra Olympic). Based off the engagement on social media to this announcement, can probably add Brindabella Blues to either/both of those lists.