Fish Creek

[Mofra]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-21/afl-losing-touch-with-its-roots-as-country-footy-leagues-suffer/10830802


The South Gippsland town, which proudly boasts a population of 201, is focused on a football contest much closer to home — the survival of the local club.

In this part of the world, AFLX — a modified format of AFL designed to be played on rectangular pitches and appeal to different markets — is being viewed as yet another sign of a code that is losing touch with its origins.
Now this is sad, and its not just any club - they gave us the one and only Bazza Standfield!
My main memory of 'Fish" is one piece of play at WO - running backwards with the flight of the ball into oncoming traffic, sticking out one mit and somehow plucking the ball as he fell to take a mark.


Does anyone know if any other small club that gave us VFL/AFL players are struggling? I actually get to Gippsland a few times per year and drove through Fish Creek not that long ago.

[bornadog]

Sockeye Salmon was also from Fish Creek.

There was a discussion today on SEN about all the country football clubs going under. AFLX is no solution.

[Dancin' Douggy]

AFLX is a complete slap in the face to grass roots football.
It's unforgivable that the AFL props up a team on the Gold Coast, a team in Western Sydney, and pours millions into the AFLX 'product'.

And casually allows football in an entire 'heritage' football state to die. Tasmania has given us so many GREAT players.

Baldock, Hart, Richo, Brent Croswell, Peter Hudson, Barry Lawrence, Verdun Howell, Alastair Lynch, Ian Stewart, Roy Cazaly and of course 'Super' MacPherson just to name a few...

But back to Fish Creek, Gary Walpole, who was super fast and a damn good player at schoolboy level came from Fish Creek.
He played 5 games for the dogs in 1983.

[Twodogs]

Ian Dunstan came to us from Fish Creek too. He was Father Sun qualified for Collingwood but preferred to come to us where he was residentially qualified. It didn't seem to make a lot of sense at the time and it makes less sense now given Dunstan transferred to North Melbourne at the peak of his career.

[Georgebwilliam]

Well said.

[chef]

A lot of local clubs are struggling as people aren't prepared to commit the time nowadays. Train 2 nights a week, then lose your Saturday to playing and Sunday to recovering. Once you have a wife and kids if they aren't involved in the club it's really quite selfish to commit that much time elsewhere.

[AshMac]

Will be interesting to see if AFLX crowds and tv coverage improve on last year with a lineup stacked with stars.

In honesty - I don’t get the strategy. Know it’s a play to take the game OS but surely it’s better doing an exhibition offshore with tier 3 players than putting it in the home of AFL w a bastardised format.

[mjp]

Heaps of country clubs are struggling...mainly because people don’t want to commit the time to play. The afl are being told to ‘fix it’...fix WHAT? As Long as the locals are turning on the tv and watching afl footy, why is it their problem to fix? They need to create a product attractive to kids so that talented sports men (and women) choose Australian footy over ‘other sports’. Whether second and third tier senior footy - country or city - survives or otherwise really shouldn’t be their mandate.

Being worried about fish creek is fine. I get it. But if the touted national reserves comp land s in 2022 then you are going to lose the sanfl clubs, the wafl clubs...you will be able to start throwing round names like Brad Hardie, Simon Beasley, Andrew purser, tony buhagiar etc...Barry Stanfield was ok but he wasn’t Simon Beasley and 2nd tier and below Australian footy is in real jeopardy right now. And the afl is not going to solve the problem.