No minor premierships or individual awards to be recognised as BFNL pulls the pin on 2021 season

THE annals of the Bendigo Football-Netball League will essentially show the competition's 2021 season didn't exist.

That is despite there being 442 games played across the league's eight grades.

It came as no great surprise on Friday when the BFNL board announced the cancellation of the remainder of its severely-interrupted 2021 season with there to be training-only restrictions in place until at least Thursday, September 23.

What came as a surprise, though, was the decision by the board not to recognise teams that finished on top of each ladder as "minor premiers" or present any individual awards.

That will be now two years in a row that the BFNL history books will be left blank for season 2020 and 2021.

Only unlike 2020 when there were no games played due to the coronavirus pandemic wiping out the season, this year there were games played - 442 of them.

That's 442 games worth of effort on not only the football field and netball court on game-day, but the hours grinding away through training sessions, both as a group and individually when lockdowns were enforced.

Not to mention volunteer hours put in, money spent by clubs, dollars contributed by sponsors, hours spent by players rehabbing sore and injured bodies and so on.

While the home and away season wasn't fulfilled playing only 12 of 18 rounds and no finals, the BFNL did get to its first target point of all teams playing each other at least once.

"With regards to competition, the minimum priority will remain to achieve a full cycle of nine regular season matches as soon as possible that offer each club an opportunity to play each opposition once in the event further interruptions to local seasons are experienced this year," BFNL manager Cameron Tomlins said on June 4 after the first two weekends of competition were lost.

A further three rounds being played though after reaching the minimum priority point resulted in what the BFNL has determined to be a season far too compromised to award minor premierships or individual awards given the uneven nature of what unfolded.

But while there will be discrepancies in terms of who was advantaged and disadvantaged by who teams had to play twice or missed out on playing a return bout against that could have boosted their percentage - and Melbourne players had to sit out two rounds on June 12 and August 14 - surely 2021 deserves some recognition in the BFNL archives.

Obviously with a big, bold asterick next to it that says "COVID-impacted season", at least some reference that there were games played in 2021 - 442 of them - and that the year wasn't a total write-off like 2020.

Those 442 games - it would have been 714 had the full season played out - are made up 59 in the seniors, 59 in the reserves and 48 in the under-18s, while on the netball court it's 48 in A grade, 48 in A reserve, 60 in B grade, 60 in B reserve and 60 in 17-under.

To be fair to the BFNL board, the absence of Maryborough in the under-18 football, Castlemaine in the A grade and Maryborough in the A reserve netball forced a discrepancy in the number of games each team played adding to the compromised nature of the season.

And there was also the forfeit of Kyneton against Sandhurst on August 14 that left the Dragons a game short in the seniors and reserves - albeit still receiving four points - that played into the league's decision-making.

"Everyone is going to have their opinion on all decisions for the league," Tomlins said on Friday.

"When we look at our competition and the significant compromise of the home and away season, it became uneven in the fact that we got beyond our halfway point with additional matches for points.

"All our grades were impacted differently... we had teams missing, forfeits, abandoned rounds and the impact of metropolitan players and their inability to come back and play in a number of rounds.

"There's not one specific reason why we made the decision we did, it's that our competitions across all grades were compromised as such that we wouldn't award individual medals and that is also a consistent approach in not awarding premierships or recognising minor premierships this year."

So there it is - a season that will effectively have no recording of it being played.

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