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IT has often been said that the Bendigo Football-Netball League is at its best when its country clubs are up and about.
When the country clubs are strong and performing well they bring with them strong and passionate supporters and help build the profile of the BFNL in their communities when they are the talk of the town.
It was like that back in the ’90s in what was a decade where Kyneton and Maryborough both won a pair of premierships and Castlemaine won one.
Throughout the ’90s seven of the BFNL grand finals featured either Castlemaine, Kyneton or Maryborough.
There was even an all-country grand final in 1999 – the battle of the Magpies – when Maryborough defeated Castlemaine.
But two decades on those glory days of the country clubs regularly being a competitive force in the BFNL and more than holding their own have become a distant memory.
Yes, Gisborne won four premierships and played in six straight grand finals between 2002 and 2007, but since then the BFNL has become a competition heavily dominated by its city-based clubs. The numbers back it up.
Since 2010 across all grades of football and netball, 76 per cent of games have been won by city clubs; 24 per cent by country clubs. The spread of finals teams through that period is 80 per cent city and 20 per cent country. And the split of premierships is 88 per cent city and just 12 per cent country.
A country team hasn’t won a senior football final since Gisborne in 2013 or won a senior flag since the Bulldogs of 2006.
Given the city clubs have had such a stranglehold of success for so long now, it has led to the four country clubs banding together to discuss ways in which they can level out the playing field and get some competitive balance back into the league.
Kyneton president Karen O’Sullivan – whose club hasn’t won a senior final since 1997 and is now in significant debt – acknowledges there’s no overnight fix, but at least creating a discussion around ways in which the country clubs can become a regular force again like the 90s is well worth it – for the betterment of those clubs and the league as a whole.
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