SOUTHERN Football League expects to expand its netball competition to two divisions next year.
The SFL netball league completed its inaugural season last month with Heatherton beating Dingley to win the premiership.
The inaugural season involved seven teams and all matches were played at the Springvale District Netball Association courts in Dingley Village.
SFL operations manager Matthew Duck said the league already had expressions of interest from several other clubs for 2013 and some existing sides were planning to field a second team.
He said Dingley and Bentleigh both planned to field second teams and Heatherton had two teams in this year’s competition.
“Next year we want to have two divisions and make them two even competitions of six or eight teams,” he said. “But the sky is the limit if we have more entries.”
Duck said the netball competition was a “fantastic” addition to the league, with other clubs encouraged to get involved.
The SFL introduced the competition to mirror country football clubs, who field both football and netball teams, mostly based at the same ground.
He said the services of the SDNA had made running the competition much easier and the league planned to continue to play its matches there, although other clubs had expressed an interest in hosting games closer to their home suburbs in future years.
“The SDNA have been really professional in how they have run things,” Duck said.
“They have taken care of a lot of the administrative things like getting umpires, handling the fixtures and doing the game day work.”
He said the SDNA’s involvement had solved the metropolitan problem of netball courts not being attached to football grounds by providing a central venue for all matches.
Duck said the growth of the netball competition had proven a “pleasant surprise” and the league was encouraging all clubs to consider entering a team.
“It has helped build the clubs involved.”
Duck said clubs who wished to enter teams would have until early March 2013 to enter the 2013 competition.
