Are We Consulting, or Just Confirming a Decision Already Made?

People send me stuff.

A lot of stuff.

Emails.

Screenshots.

Messages.

Documents.

And the occasional "you didn't get this from me".

I suppose that happens because I have a public forum.

I tend to write about the things other people either don't want to say publicly or feel they can't.

And football can be like that.

Criticising Football Tasmania can feel risky for clubs.

Clubs need licences.

They need approvals.

They need competitions.

They need relationships with the governing body to work.

So quite understandably, a lot of people keep their heads down.

But that does not mean there aren't questions.

There are plenty.

And right now there are some very big ones.

Football Tasmania has established a Competitions Working Group to look at the future of senior and youth football in Tasmania.

I wrote about the formation of this group earlier in the year in The Chosen Ones, when I questioned how the representatives had been selected and whether the process was transparent enough for a group supposedly representing the collective interests of clubs.

The scope of the group has now become even broader.

NPL.

WSL.

Championship.

Promotion and relegation.

Youth structures.

Licensing.

Competition pathways.

Facilities.

The long-term direction of the game.

These are not decisions about whether Round 7 is played on Saturday or Sunday.

These are questions that could shape Tasmanian football for years.

Which makes me wonder why it all seems to be happening in such a hurry.

This piece is long.

Really long.

Which feels appropriate, given the Working Group has been handed years of decisions and a few days to think about them.

I hope they packed a lunch.

And a sleeping bag.

The chosen few

The Working Group is a relatively small, appointed group.

There are club representatives and Football Tasmania representatives and they have been given a very broad brief.

That is not necessarily a problem.

Someone has to start the conversation.

But surely with questions this significant, the process should be long enough and broad enough to genuinely test ideas before decisions start taking shape.

Clubs were asked for feedback on ten major areas ahead of the first meeting.

And the turnaround has been tight.

Very tight.

How much meaningful consultation can a club really undertake in a few days?

On whether the NPL should have finals.

Whether Championship 1 should disappear.

Whether promotion and relegation should be introduced.

What youth football should look like.

These are not yes/no questions.

They deserve modelling.

Financial information.

Competition data.

Discussion with coaches.

Discussion with technical people.

Discussion with players.

Discussion with volunteers and administrators.

And perhaps a little time to think.

And then there is the calendar

This is the bit that really made me stop.

Attached to the consultation material was a proposed 2027 competition calendar.

And that calendar already has an NPL and WSL season built around 21 rounds plus a Finals Series.

Three rounds.

Then finals.

Which raises an obvious question.

Has that decision already effectively been made?

Because if the Working Group is genuinely being asked whether we should have an NPL Finals Series in 2027, why has the draft calendar already been constructed on the assumption that we will?

Perhaps it is simply a working draft.

Perhaps Football Tasmania needed something on paper to start the discussion.

That is perfectly possible.

But perception matters.

And from the outside, it can look a little like we are being asked to consult on the colour of the curtains after the house has already been built.

If the Working Group decides that four full rounds would be better than three rounds and finals, the calendar changes completely.

If it decides there should be no finals, the calendar changes.

If it decides the competition structure itself needs to change, the calendar changes again.

So why not settle the competition model first?

Then build the calendar around it.

Why finals?

I should probably declare my hand here.

I am not particularly fond of finals series in league football.

I understand why people enjoy them.

They create an event.

There is jeopardy.

There is a Grand Final.

Someone gets to lift another trophy.

But I struggle with the principle.

A league season tests a football club over months.

It tests depth.

Injuries.

Suspensions.

Travel.

Poor form.

Bad weather.

Players leaving.

Young players coming through.

The ability to recover from a bad result.

The ability to keep winning when you are tired and carrying injuries.

Resilience.

Consistency.

A team can graft its way through 28 matches, deal with everything a season throws at it and finish on top.

To me, that is your champion.

Then we add a short Finals Series where another club can get itself right at exactly the right time, win two or three games and suddenly become the team everyone is talking about at the end of the season.

I am not convinced that makes the competition better.

And I think, inevitably, it takes something away from the team that actually won the league.

Perhaps that is the traditionalist in me.

But if we have eight teams, I would rather see them play four full rounds.

Twenty-eight league games.

Everyone plays everyone the same number of times.

Home and away twice.

Test the squads.

Test the depth.

Test the coaches.

Test the clubs.

Then the team sitting on top after 28 games is the champion.

Simple.

And instead of manufacturing more football through a Finals Series for only some clubs, just play more league football.

Of course there is a financial question.

Seven additional rounds cost money.

Referees.

Travel.

Ground hire.

Match-day operations.

But there are also another three or four home games for every club.

More gate.

More canteen and bar sales.

More sponsorship opportunities.

So show us the numbers.

What does three rounds plus finals cost?

What does four rounds cost?

What would each mean for club licence fees?

If four rounds is simply unaffordable, that is relevant information.

But don't start with the assumption that we need a Finals Series.

Start with the football.

For me, the league should be the main event.

And if we want more football, there is a very simple solution.

Play more football.

The match-day product matters too

There is another piece of this that probably does not get talked about enough.

Where practical, why are clubs not playing the same opposition across multiple senior teams on the same day?

U21 Men.

WSL.

NPL Men.

Or perhaps U18 Girls, WSL and senior men.

At the moment, we too often have one-off games.

A team arrives.

They play.

They leave.

That does very little for atmosphere.

It does very little for gates.

It does very little for canteen or bar sales.

It does very little for sponsors.

A proper club-versus-club match day gives people a reason to stay.

It creates atmosphere.

It connects younger players to senior teams.

It makes the whole thing feel more like a club event than a collection of unrelated fixtures.

Of course, this is not always possible in a statewide league.

Travel matters.

Nobody wants a Devonport U21 team leaving home at 4am just because it makes the fixture list look neat.

Which, again, takes us to a bigger question.

Do we actually need a statewide NPL?

There.

I said it.

Perhaps we do.

But if we are genuinely reviewing the future of Tasmanian football, why shouldn't the question be asked?

What would happen if we had strong Northern and Southern premier competitions with genuine promotion and relegation?

Then used Cup competitions to provide more statewide football?

You could have more local rivalries.

Less travel.

More meaningful Cup football.

More realistic fixture alignment.

Better match-day atmosphere.

And perhaps more football overall.

The statewide element does not have to disappear.

It could become more meaningful.

Cup competitions.

North v South.

Championship matches.

Statewide knockout football that actually feels special because it is not happening every week.

A regional league structure with proper statewide Cups might give us the best of both worlds.

Strong local competition and meaningful statewide football.

Again, I am not saying this must be the answer.

But surely a Working Group tasked with looking at the long-term structure of the game should be willing to ask the question.

What about the women?

The WSL discussion is even more complicated.

Do we simply add finals because the men have them?

I do not think that should be the starting point.

The bigger issue is whether the competition itself is strong enough and competitive enough.

At present we have one very dominant team.

That can change quickly in football, of course.

But perhaps the immediate priority should be strengthening the league itself.

The player demographic is also interesting.

There are a lot of very young players playing senior women's football.

Then a group of older, experienced players.

There does not always seem to be the depth through the middle that you would expect from a mature senior competition.

Each club is also developing its women's program differently.

So before we turn WSL into "NPL Women", perhaps we should ask what that actually means.

Does the football improve?

Do clubs receive more support?

Do coaching standards improve?

Does player retention improve?

Or does everything simply become more expensive because the competition suddenly has three different letters in front of its name?

Calling something NPL does not automatically make it better.

If we are serious about elevating women's football, then strengthen the competition first.

Promotion and relegation

I am a traditionalist on this one too.

I like promotion and relegation.

Finish last and there should be consequences.

Win the competition below and there should be an opportunity to go up.

Sporting performance should matter.

The difficulty in Tasmania is what happens when the Championship winner does not want promotion.

That is not easily solved.

Perhaps entering Championship needs to come with an expectation that if you win it and meet reasonable licensing standards, you go up.

Otherwise we do not really have a football pyramid.

We have separate competitions with an occasional conversation about whether somebody would like to change leagues.

And if Championship 1 disappears, perhaps we should also stop calling the competitions below Championship "Social Leagues".

If we want a genuine pathway, then call them what they are.

Championship.

Division 1.

Division 2.

Division 3.

Division 4.

Simple.

Clear.

A pyramid.

Our youth need more football

This is probably the issue I feel most strongly about.

Our youth players simply do not play enough competitive football.

We used to have more Cup competitions.

We have lost them.

Then there are byes.

Uneven competitions.

Forfeits.

Washed-out rounds.

And suddenly a 15-year-old who is supposedly on a development pathway has played surprisingly few meaningful matches.

If we are serious about development, perhaps we should start with a very simple question.

How many competitive games should a 14, 15 or 16-year-old footballer play in a season?

Then work backwards and build competitions that deliver it.

Instead, we spend enormous amounts of time discussing structures, age groups and alignment.

Maybe the number of games the kids actually play should be our starting point.

More league football.

More Cups.

Reschedule washed-out rounds where possible.

Just give them more football.

Licensing needs some Tasmanian reality

Standards are important.

Of course they are.

Clubs should be well governed.

Coaches should be appropriately qualified.

Players should be looked after.

Clubs should be financially responsible.

But standards also need to reflect Tasmania.

We have a relatively small pool of players.

If licensing says every club needs teams at every age, we can end up with clubs racing around recruiting the same children from each other to satisfy licence criteria.

That isn't growing football.

It is moving players around.

Facilities are another obvious example.

Most Tasmanian clubs do not own their grounds.

Councils do.

And councils are not always particularly helpful.

Clubs can lobby.

They can write.

They can plead.

They can put in grant applications.

But ultimately they often do not control whether a light tower gets replaced, a changeroom gets upgraded or another pitch becomes available.

Should a club lose its licence because a council will not build something?

There has to be some common sense.

Licensing should improve clubs.

It should not create a player race or punish clubs for things genuinely outside their control.

This deserves time

I actually think the Working Group is a good idea.

There are some important conversations that Tasmanian football has avoided for too long.

But that is exactly why I do not think they should be rushed.

If we are genuinely talking about the shape of the game for the next five or ten years, then give the process time.

Put options on the table.

Show the financial modelling.

Show the participation numbers.

Show how many games youth players actually play.

Show the travel implications.

Show what the finals actually delivered.

Ask clubs.

Ask players.

Ask coaches.

Ask technical people.

Ask administrators.

Ask people in the North and South.

Then decide.

Because consultation only has value if the outcome is still capable of changing.

If the calendar already assumes 21 rounds and finals before the first Working Group meeting has even taken place, it is reasonable for people to ask.

Are we actually deciding what the competition should look like?

Or are we being consulted on a decision that has largely already been made?

And if the answer is that nothing has been decided yet, excellent.

Then let's have the conversation properly.

Because these are big questions.

They deserve more than a few days of thinking.

And, above all, if we want better football in Tasmania, perhaps the starting point is not that complicated.

Play more football.