EVERYBODY has played a part in the journey, says league president Paul Matheson, as SFNL grand final action returns after a three-year break.
Matheson said the 15 football and netball finals at Mildura Sporting Precinct would be “a massive conclusion” to a difficult period for community sport.
“The first year with COVID was absolutely devastating, and a nightmare,” Matheson said, who became SFNL president just over a month before the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Australia.
“We did everything possible to play a (2020) season and then we decided to play a junior season, and then the rug was pulled from beneath us for that.”
An interrupted 2021 SFNL season was cut short after 12 rounds and 2022 had begun with uncertainty, but Matheson said the past two years had brought out a collaborative approach in clubs.
He said the past two years had pushed the league board to bring “a bit of certainty” to clubs by developing rules and guidelines to account for any future disruption to football and netball.
“A lot of the time confusion was around (that) we didn’t really have any rules or plans in place,” he said. “There were too many unknowns.”
SFNL released a new COVID-protocol earlier this year to address what constituted a season, how points were allocated for cancelled matches and the grounds for deciding a premier.
This followed the uncertain close in 2021 when clubs such as Imperials, who sat on top of the ladder with a 9-1 record, raised their disappointment they had missed out on a flag as no measures existed to decide a premier.
However, Matheson said the past three years had changed the community sport landscape.
He said there was “a huge shortage of volunteers”, while junior numbers had not bounced back to pre-COVID-19 levels.
But he said he had seen positive signs of recruiting at senior football level which he said would drive growth at clubs in 2023.
“Next year, not only the standard of the competition will pick up, but you’ll start to see the hard work that people have put into junior development,” he said.
He said the SFNL aimed to invest more in developing Sunraysia football and netball squads after securing training access at Sarah Oval and the league had learned how to set up local development systems based on the Bendigo Pioneers’ system.
Matheson said the grand final was a day to celebrate community and everybody’s effort to work together.
“We all strive to win the premiership,” he said.
“The grand final will be a day of celebration that we’ve actually got there.
“We’ve all had a part to get to where we are. It just shows the resilience of the community.”
