Originally Posted by
Bremsstrahlung
Not doing the club you support many favours with these comments, imo.
Understandably you feel threatened and attacked by the comments on here, but it’s part of the territory.
South Cardiff copped it for their facilities over their years in the top flight too. The years Lakes and Azzurri were dumped, and ever since, there’s been a focus on “criteria” and how some clubs meet the criteria but others do not.
The allocation of licenses was promised to be for current set up, not promises or plans for the future and I think clubs with NPL aspirations have a right to challenge why their clubs are being overlooked.
If you have constructive rebuttals as to why Valentine meet criteria, I’m sure everyone would happily listen.
For instance, their junior base was always one of the strongest in Macquarie district and the merger originally was seen as a great thing for the up and coming youth. Is there many Valentine juniors in the NPL set up?
I think their biggest issue and easiest to criticise is their facilities. Cahill oval had potential to be a good venue if they sorted the cricket pitch out. But that was a hazard. I remember playing there after a bit of rain the night before and the pitch was a ice skating rink, not suitable.
The redevelopments promise to offer a much better venue, but the questions remain how the current CB complex meets NPL criteria.
Many clubs with similar or on par set ups, eg south Cardiff, cooks hill, new lambton, Toronto etc are probably curious why they didn’t get a license too.
When results, or lack thereof, are added to the equation, more questions begin to be asked. The same questions being asked of Adamstown and Lake Macquarie.
For the most part, I don’t think the criticism is aimed at the clubs (maybe their lack of a plan B), but more towards the lack of transparency from NNSWF regarding criteria and NPL.
While they continue to use an application system and behind closed doors judgement on which clubs meet criteria and withhold this information, it leads to speculation and questions. I understand clubs are given “feedback” regarding their own applications but obviously are not privy to their competitors feedback, which leads to “How are xxxx in NPL when we aren’t”