A pathway to the next level, promotion for the city, players filtering back into local competitions better for the VFL experience, and, – perhaps the biggest appeal to the community – the second-best competition in Australia in our backyard are all at risk if the Gold folds.

PATHWAY TO THE NEXT LEVEL 

 I still remember one of my first meetings with former Bendigo Bombers chairman Warren Driscoll in February, 2004, when he outlined his vision for the VFL club.

“It would be great to win a premiership, but to me, that’s not the priority of the club,” Driscoll said.

“This may sound silly, but rather than a premiership, I would love to see three or four guys picked up in the AFL national or rookie draft. That would give me more pleasure than a Bendigo premiership, because that’s what it’s all about.”

Providing a pathway to the AFL has been one of the cornerstones of Bendigo’s VFL club – through the guise of the Diggers, Bombers and Gold – since its inception in 1998.

There will be those who argue that 10 players over 15 years drafted onto AFL lists from Bendigo’s VFL club isn’t worth shouting from the rooftops. Then again, considering the VFL has been a secondary pathway to the TAC Cup, perhaps 10 draftees in 15 years is more than adequate.

The fact is VFL in Bendigo has provided an AFL pathway for Nathan Lovett-Murray (Essendon); Guy Campbell (Sydney); Jarrod Atkinson (Essendon); Hayden Skipworth (Essendon after previously playing with Adelaide); Stewart Crameri (Essendon); Tory Dickson (Western Bulldogs); Sam Dunnell (St Kilda); Shane Biggs (Sydney); Tom Campbell (Western Bulldogs); and Jack Redpath (Western Bulldogs, via Kyneton).

Stewart Crameri – the ultimate poster boy for what VFL in Bendigo offers – told the Bendigo Advertiser earlier this year on the eve of his 50th game for Essendon that he’d still be playing in the Bendigo Football League at Maryborough if it wasn’t for the opportunity to play with the Bendigo Bombers.

It wasn’t an easy VFL ride for Crameri, who had to bide his time in the reserves with the Bombers in his first year in 2007.

But he persisted, made his VFL senior debut in 2008, caught the eye of Essendon, where he did two pre-seasons before he was rookie-listed by the Dons at the end of 2009.

The rest is history.

Four years on, Crameri now has his name alongside the likes of John Coleman, Matthew Lloyd, James Hird and Simon Madden on the Essendon honour board as a club leading goalkicker.

“That shows just how important that VFL system is in Bendigo and around the district, so guys like myself can get that AFL chance,” Crameri said.

Nathan Lovett-Murray – who joined the Bendigo Bombers in 2003 through a Michael Long Scholarship – spent part of 2003 running around in the BFL with Kangaroo Flat.

The following year Lovett-Murray was in the Essendon side for its first game of the 2004 season against Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium.

Ten years on, Lovett-Murray is now a 144-game player with Essendon.

And don’t forget the story of Matthew Knights and the kickstart the Bendigo Bombers provided him.

Knights coached the Bombers for three years between 2005 and 2007 – twice taking them into the finals – before he was the man anointed the successor to Kevin Sheedy’s 27 years as coach at Essendon.

Yes, he had a foot in the door already with the Essendon-Bendigo alignment, and it ended messy for Knights at Windy Hill three years later, but what an advertisement for the Bendigo pathway that the guy who coached our VFL team for three years went on to coach one of the power clubs of the AFL.

Then there’s Ross Smith, one of the assistant coaches at Hawthorn in the Hawks’ 2008 premiership season. Where did he get his big break – as the inaugural coach of the Bendigo Diggers in 1998.

PROMOTION FOR THE CITY 

Aside from WNBL franchise Bendigo Spirit, what other sporting teams can provide Bendigo with statewide television exposure?

The Bendigo Gold can through ABC TV’s partnership with the VFL. We saw that last month when Bendigo’s game at Port Melbourne was televised live on a Saturday afternoon.

The result may have been a 59-point defeat, but for that afternoon, the VFL TV focus was on Bendigo, and as the old saying goes, any publicity is good publicity.

I wonder how much it would cost the City of Greater Bendigo’s marketing department for a three-hour slot on TV with Bendigo the focus?

And what about the 3000 people who turned up at the QEO earlier in the year to watch the Gold take on Collingwood on a Friday night.

Yes, most of the crowd were there to watch Collingwood, and you can bet a vast majority of the black and white army who piled into the QEO travelled up the Calder to invade our city for the night.

It was the same with the Essendon supporters who travelled to Bendigo in round one for the keenly-anticipated clash between the Gold and their former aligned partners.

The Gold may not have huge support locally, but opposition supporters seem to enjoy making the trip up to Bendigo for a day or night at the footy, and that can only be good for the coffers of the city.

PLAYERS BETTER FOR THE VFL EXPERIENCE 

Surely, there wouldn’t be a player who has gone back to local footy better for the experience of being involved in Bendigo’s VFL club.

How could a country footballer not benefit from the chance to train in a semi-elite environment and play against AFL-listed players each week?

Again, ask Stewart Crameri about the day in 2008 he tagged Western Bulldogs’ legend Scott West in a Bendigo-Williamstown game. What a learning curve that must have been.

As well as those who have gone on to be drafted by AFL clubs, the list of players who have come through the VFL program and filtered back into local leagues reads like a who’s who of Bendigo football.

Simon Rosa, Grant Weeks, Justin Maddern, Kain Robins, Josh Bowe, Nick Carter, Brady Childs, Gavin Bowles, James Bristow, Blair Holmes, Jon Coghlan, Daniel Anderson, Tyrone Downie, Dale Young, Mark Fitzgerald, Darren Farrugia, Shannon Geary, Shane Page, Stacy Fiske, Aaron Connaughton and Aaron Hawks... there’s 21 well-known players in the past decade alone post-Diggers who have been on Bendigo’s VFL’s list – not because they had their arms twisted to play there, but because they saw the benefits of playing at the next level and wanted to be part of it.

No doubt, the experience those players gained from their time in the VFL, be it for one, two, three years or more, is still being shared in some way at their current club, be it preparation, rehab or simply an on-field trick or two learned from lining up on an AFL-listed player.

As much as the mantra of Bendigo’s VFL club has been to provide a pathway for players with an AFL dream, equally, it has had a focus on making sure that players who have been through the program come out the other side better for it.

THE SECOND-BEST FOOTBALL COMPETITION IN OUR OWN BACKYARD

What footy fan wouldn’t be excited by what the VFL has to offer Bendigo.

It’s the second-best competition in Australia behind the AFL and we have it here in our own backyard at the QEO.

The only other regional city where you can see VFL regularly is Ballarat – home of the North Ballarat Roosters, who, thanks to their own facilities and revenue stream in pokies, not to mention an outstanding coach in Gerard Fitzgerald, have been a success.

Without having to leave Bendigo, Steven Stroobants, Tom Hams, Alexander Pollock and Che Walls – to name a few locals – have had the chance to lock horns on the QEO this year with the likes of Darren Jolly, Luke Ball, Alan Didak (Collingwood), Leroy Jetta, Scott Gumbleton and Jason Winderlich (Essendon).

 And we as a community have had a chance to watch them up close and interact with those AFL players in what’s the grassroots meets the elite environment of the VFL.

We’ve got an improving facility at the QEO, headlined by a brilliant new surface that was championed heavily by the Bendigo Bombers, so let’s do all we can to make sure we have the best standard of regular football we can get – VFL – playing on it. 

WHAT COULD BE BETTER 

Clearly, the Gold desperately need a home base urgently. 

The fact the Diggers, Gold and Bombers have survived this long without a permanent home base to generate revenue through a simple after-match drink like every other football club takes for granted is credit to all those who have kept the club alive. 

A home base is a priority moving forward and has well and truly been put back on the agenda this week.

● The Gold needs to maximise crowds. The Friday night market early in the season that the club hoped to make a niche proved a winner thanks to the fixturing of strong opposition teams.

But the club needs to steer clear of Saturday afternoon games at the QEO. Most people who have an interest in football will support their local club on a Saturday over the Gold.

So if it’s not Friday nights, push for home games to played on Sunday to avoid the Saturday local football clashes in what’s already a saturated market.

● In no way is this a knock on the list of players this year – I admire every one of them for putting their hand up for what was always going to be a tough slog – but would the community buy-in increase if there was more local content in the team?

Most football followers would look at the Gold’s team on a Friday and be unfamiliar with many of the names who were recruited from outside the region to form the stand-alone squad.

Had the Gold been able to attract more local stars – perhaps a few of Grant Weeks, Travis Baird, Simon Rosa, Sam Mildren, Tom Waters, Jake Ward, Jack Geary and Tyson MacIlwain to name a handful – interest in the team would be greater locally, but recruiting those names comes at the expense of the BFL product.

● Regardless of whether Bendigo can attract more local talent and avoid Saturday clashes with local footy, football is a results-driven business and people want to support a winner, and sadly, that’s not the Gold.

Not through a lack of effort from the players, but the results this year have been ugly, with the club having lost all 14 games by an average of 92 points.

Bendigo must find a way to recruit the players to compete in a competition which is made up of machinations of stand-alone VFL teams, aligned AFL-VFL teams and AFL clubs that have their own VFL teams.

● Right now, the future of Bendigo’s VFL team is unclear, but we’ve already seen this year how a major sporting club on the brink can turn it around.

Don’t forget that a year before the Bendigo Spirit captured the attention of not only this city, but the country, by winning the WNBL championship in March, it was teetering close to the edge of extinction, before a stunning revival on the back of solid business support and winning games with a strong local list.

It’s a long road ahead, but Bendigo stands to lose plenty if the 15 years of VFL in the city isn’t deemed worth persisting with.