Football and netball thrive in the Riverina

By James Matthey

Amongst fierce competition between Australia’s major sporting codes to be crowned the most popular, junior football and netball have been expanding their appeal to kids in the Riverina.

The Wagga District Junior Football Netball League (WDJFNL) and South West Junior Football Netball League (SWJFNL) have undertaken initiatives in recent times that have served to accommodate increasing participation numbers in both sports.

WDJFNL this year introduced an Under-14s AFL competition to be played as stand-alone fixtures on Friday nights, and the response from local players has been a great success story for the league.

WDJFNL President, Stephen Stapleton, said the new competition gave clubs who weren’t able to field a team on the weekend a great avenue to promote football to kids in the Under-14 age group.

“In order to enable us to play an Under-14s competition this year we had to promote the stand-alone Friday night competition, and that meant we were able to have seven teams in the competition,” said Stapleton.

“That’s a huge highlight, the fact that we managed to get a stand-alone Friday night Under-14s competition enabling far more people to play football.

“With the highly successful Auskick program we anticipate that we’re going to have continued numbers surging through, and that was the whole point of having the new Under-14s competition.

“There were several clubs who weren’t in a position to field a Sunday team in that competition so that was the reason we created the Friday night competition, because instead of only having three clubs we can get seven or eight clubs to play.”

The WDJFNL has expanded not only its football program but its netball competition too, this year fielding teams in three age groups for the first time, including the Under-11s, Under-13s and Under-15s.

The SWJFNL has also experienced a boom in netball popularity since the sport was introduced four years ago.

While SWJFNL and WDJFNL representative teams have been clashing on the football field for four years, 2013 was the first year to see representative netball games being played between the two leagues.

SWJFNL President, Troy Evans, said netball has taken off in a very short space of time, and expects it to continue growing.

“In four years we’ve gone from one team to four teams in the juniors,” said Evans.

“Netball is growing really quickly, it’s sort of taking over the footy side of things at the moment.

“Netball has really taken off.

“I think netball is going to grow, I don’t know how big, but the numbers will go up.”

Despite admitting that it was becoming more challenging to field numbers in the league’s junior football sides, particularly within small country towns, Evans said that it was heartening to see clubs and communities rallying to keep the competitions afloat.

“The comp is still pretty strong, this year we’ve got four different teams that could compete in grand finals in each grade so it’s pretty even, but it’s just the numbers that are an issue at the moment,” said Evans.

“The communities in the country towns do pull us all together and you often see players playing up.

“Instead of forfeiting a game they put kids from the 13s up into the 15s, and I know in Griffith and Leeton where the big numbers are, they take their kids over to the towns that are struggling for numbers and they give them kids so they can get a game and have a full team.”

As for the future of the league, Evans said a big focus was being put on aligning the interests of senior and junior clubs of the same name, rather than the current set-up which sees both clubs operate, for the most part, separately.

“The big aim the last couple of years is getting the senior and junior clubs together.

“Before, they were just juniors by themselves and seniors by themselves, so the big push now is to get juniors to play on the same day as the seniors.

“A bit like the Hume League and the North Riverina League, they all play on the same day at the same place, it’s one comp.

“I think the future is to get one club, juniors and seniors, and make it like that one day.”