BFNL chair Carol McKinstry has defended the league's process in making its decision to cancel the finals series and not honour teams or individuals with awards.
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Friday's decision to pull stumps on the 2021 season left some club presidents that had football and/or netball teams still in the hunt for premierships questioning the league over a lack of consultation.
"We had been meeting pretty regularly, but some of the presidents thought we should be voting on this,'' McKinstry said.
"Under the BFNL constitution we have to give 30 days notice of a vote. Through a pandemic things move quicker than that which makes it hard to achieve that.
"In the constitution and by-laws the BFNL has jurisdiction over fixtures.
"We were being more consultative earlier in the season and there was quite a lot of difference in what clubs were thinking.
"Clubs have to remember that in terms of the finals there's quite a large financial implication for the league.
"We wanted to have a finals series, but we were hoping for earlier indications from the state government that we could.
"We discussed this for more than an hour on Friday morning and we thought this was drawing the season out.
"While we might not have had a league meeting as such, (BFNL manager) Cameron (Tomlins) has been in constant communication with the club presidents and kept them informed with what was going on.
"We did put a road map out to get back to the finals, but that was contingent upon getting back to training, probably a bit earlier. We didn't feel as though we were going to be back playing netball and footy by the end of this month, so we made the decision (to cancel the finals).
"Yes, we want to be consultative, but at the end of the day it's the board who makes the decisions and it's the board who has to wear those decisions."
The decision to not honour the teams that finished on top of the ladder in their respective grades of football and netball, or present league individual awards, had a mixed reaction.
"We discussed long and hard as to whether we would present minor premierships and individual awards,'' McKinstry said.
"The last half of our season was really compromised. We had a forfeit in the senior footy and, with clubs without teams in A-grade netball, we had players who weren't given the same opportunities to accumulate votes .
"We didn't want to go back to round nine because we did play for points in the rounds after that.
"We know that everyone is not going to be happy with that decision, but we think it's the fairest way to go."
Read more: Clubs respond to BFNL board decisions
Read more: The BFNL season that never was
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