By Marcus Uhe
Berwick and Beaconsfield Netball Club’s future in the Outer East Football Netball League could be sealed as early as Monday 21 August at a league board meeting.
As part of the League’s structural review, the majority of football and netball clubs confirmed that their preference is to host as many fixtures as possible with both netball and football at home on the same day.
A subsequent question regarding the feasibility of standalone netball clubs was then asked, where a majority of clubs expressed that standalone netball clubs created fixturing issues.
Following the feedback from clubs, draft recommendations on the future of the competitions were distributed to clubs, who will be given the opportunity to provide feedback on the recommendations this week.
Berwick and Beaconsfield, as standalone netball clubs, were not included in the drafted plans.
Monday night’s board meeting will consider the feedback provided by clubs on the drafts, before making a decision on the final recommendations.
President of the Berwick Netball Club, Lani Mannay said the club did not anticipate the results of the survey and were left disappointed by their exclusion to the draft.
“We are one of the few clubs that field all 10 teams in the league – all our juniors, A B C and D grade,” Mannay said.
“We thought, we’re valuable to the league because we field all our teams, we do all the right things, we host our games, we’ve managed to survive without a football club, we’re still financial, we pay our bills.
“We thought we would get the support from everyone to keep us in the league, because we actually do the right thing, and we substantiate them having a junior league.
“It doesn’t seem justifiable when you’ve got clubs there that, all along we’ve been told that you have to field all 10 teams, and if you don’t field all 10 teams then you’re probably looking at not being part of the league anymore.
“We did all that, the only thing was, we didn’t follow a football club, but that wasn’t our choice.
“We didn’t choose for Berwick to leave or go to another league.”
Berwick Football Club chose to leave the Outer East competition for the Eastern Football Netball League (EFNL) in 2020 and Beaconsfield Football Club followed suit in 2021, but the netball clubs chose to stay.
Mannay said there was “no way” that Berwick could field teams in the EFNL and the club did not wish to play on a Friday night.
“Lot of those clubs that were in the South East Football Netball League (SEFNL) got pushed out to play at Dingley or play on a Friday night,” she said.
“That’s not what we play for; we play so that we can be part of that footy-netball atmosphere.
“I can’t speak for Beaconsfield, but for us it was a no-brainer (to stay).
“We wouldn’t be able to do that, we’d end up like Cranbourne.”
Cranbourne fields a single senior netball side in the Southern Football Netball League’s OpenB1 competition.
Outer East CEO Brett Connell sympathised with Berwick and Beaconsfield, stressing that both are operationally sound and well-run, but insisted that the league was beholden to act in the best interests of the majority of clubs.
“It’s not a conversation that we wanted to have, but the majority of clubs wanted that, and that’s what this structural review was about,” Connell said.
“We’re not in the business of stopping or decreasing participation.
“From our angle, we’re losing two strong netball clubs; we’re losing 250-300 participants at a senior level.
“It’s not a decision we made lightly, and what we did really focus on also was the junior structures we had in the South East that we would still support, as we said we would.
“We had to go with the workshop feedback as well as the survey results which were pretty convincing, saying that (clubs) want to play all (their) games at home on one day, and that standalone netball is an issue.”
Mannay said the club would not enter their juniors into the Outer East competition if they felt that the senior netballers were “not welcome”.
The club confirmed in a statement on its Facebook page on Wednesday 9 August that they will participate in a competitive netball competition in 2024 and will “ensure our players, families and community are always our first priority.”
Beaconsfield Netball Club was contacted for comment.
