AFL Victoria and Picola District Football Netball League have failed to come to terms on an affiliation agreement for the 2023 season before the proposed Friday, November 18 deadline.
As reported last week, the league had been at loggerheads with its governing body when it came to the details of the affiliation agreement it had been presented.
The two parties were unable to reach an outcome by the deadline after negotiations ended in a stalemate.
The league, which is still technically aligned with AFL Victoria until December 31, now finds itself in limbo and could lose affiliation status for the second time in five years if a resolution cannot be found.
AFL Goulburn Murray region manager Shaun Connell confirmed on Monday no agreement had been reached by the deadline and explained what the next step would be.
“From our end we didn’t receive confirmation from the league around affiliation, so we’ve notified them and the clubs that was the case,” Connell said.
“Our process from here will be to invite the clubs to a meeting to seek clarification on any matters they have brought forward to us over the past couple of weeks.
“We hope that will empower the clubs into making the decisions that they need to consider moving forward.”
As for why the league was unable to come to terms with AFL Victoria, league operations manager Shane Railton relayed the reason behind the missed deadline.
“There are some non-negotiables in there (the proposed affiliation agreement) from the AFL’s perspective which the league at this stage isn’t willing to agree to,” Railton said.
“Some of those (non-negotiables) relate to the player points, there are still some discussions with that which need to take place in that space.
“There has been some sort of movement in that which has been positive, the original position from AFL Victoria was seemingly pretty solid, whereas now there seems to have been some movement in that which has been positive.”
Another sticking point was the fact, according to Railton, the proposed affiliation agreement differed to those issued to other AFL Victoria-governed leagues.
“We had passed on our position to AFL Victoria some time ago, we are well aware of what other affiliation agreements look like and they vary considerably to the one we were provided,” Railton said.
“Nobody else in the state has been given a deadline, last week we were given advice from the AFL that our current agreement stands until December 31, so until that day we are affiliated with the AFL.”
However, Connell was quick to refute this claim.
“That’s not true, they are all the same,” Connell said.
“There is a consistent template (for our affiliation agreements) used across the region and there is no variance to those, so that claim is not accurate.”
From an AFL Victoria point of view, a perfect world scenario would have an agreement reached and all PDFNL clubs remain affiliated with the governing body.
“Our position hasn’t changed, we want to see all those clubs (in the PDFNL) stay together in an affiliated environment,” Connell said.
“We think there are a lot of benefits for the clubs in staying together and being affiliated, so we hope to achieve that outcome working with the clubs directly.”
Railton said the league was hopeful of a similar outcome and was interested in remaining affiliated with AFL Victoria.
“We are at a point now where we are waiting for the AFL to come back with an agreement that is somewhat in line with the ones they have provided to others and we’ll go from there,” Railton said.
“We’ve always had an interest in being affiliated with AFL Victoria, but we need to be also mindful that the affiliation has no effect on our netball or non-playing members.”
Railton provided an update on Tocumwal’s provisional suspension from the league and said claims the club had been suspended following its organisation of a meeting with fellow clubs without the league being in attendance was not the reason why the decision was made.