WAFL need to pick up their game

A lot of key football people have flown the flag for the WAFL over the past few months.

The league has been under siege. With the spectre of the two AFL clubs trying to muscle their way into the local competition and concerns about how they will be able to generate much-needed funds from a new stadium deal, the WAFL have needed a few mates to stand by them.

State clubs haven't been shy in trying to raise support for their causes, either.

For the time being, the WAFL's efforts at resisting the entry of West Coast and Fremantle reserves teams have been successful and - according to influential football identities - the integrity built over 126 years has been maintained.

But, in significant ways, the WAFL aren't keeping up their end of the bargain.

In their submission on the reserves teams the Eagles and Dockers played on the view that the WAFL was a competition in decay. Clubs were broke, supporter interest had waned, facilities were poor and unless there was a radical change in approach to its marketing the local league would soon be critically ill.

It prompted some important football stakeholders to step forward and protect a sporting structure they have supported for decades.

However, the WAFL have let the team down.
It isn't good enough that 6000 people can attend a match at Medibank Stadium and not have a functioning scoreboard, like what happened on Foundation Day.

The public can't be given incorrect match results. Last month a malfunctioning computer program credited West Perth with a win over East Fremantle when the Sharks had triumphed. The details were picked up by some media because the WAFL, unlike many other competitions on the same or even lower sporting level, do not directly distribute scores to the news outlets on Saturdays.

Thus the policy of sending full sets of match details to media on Monday afternoons - almost 48 hours after the games started - does little to promote a competition in an age when news travels faster than ever.

Then last weekend, when neither WA AFL club was active, the WAFL opted to stage just one match in the metropolitan area. One of the gripes of the State league is the lack of available timeslots in a heavy AFL schedule to showcase their wares. When one comes along it is largely dismissed.

While the Foxtel Cup has added a difficult dimension to an already-complicated fixture process, the season draw is already compromised due to the odd numbers of teams. Surely, it could have been manipulated for the three matches to be played at hubs such as Fremantle, Leederville or Joondalup on two days when locals aren't focused on Eagles and Dockers.

By last Monday there was no mention by the WAFL via website, email, twitter, carrier pigeon or post of the Foxtel Cup semifinal involving East Perth two days earlier.

It becomes tough for fans to argue the WAFL is a vibrant competition if they can't find out what is going on.
As those that remember what the WAFL was like before the 1987 expansion into the AFL fade away, there will be fewer of those significant WA football movers and shakers to jump to the league's defence.

So it is crucial WAFL outfits learn to help themselves.