Summerland AFL takes on Darling Downs at Fripp Oval, Ballina, in May. With a number of new ventures, there might soon be far more opportunities to represent the region in Australian football.
AS FAR as ambitions go, none could be more adventurous, which is why a plan to field a Northern Rivers team in the premier Queensland AFL competition will be more long-term rather than ‘long-shot’.
The bid team, dubbed NR13, is being led by Coolangatta-Tweed Blues club president and AFL PNG chairman Scott Reid, who has formed a steering committee.
The idea, hatched at least a year ago, will largely depend on the direction the new North East Australian Football League takes.
The NEAFL, signed off by the AFL Commission last month, encompasses teams from the Queensland Australian Football League (Northern Conference) and AFL Canberra (Eastern Conference).
There will be 17 clubs from Queensland, New South Wales, including Israel Folau’s GWS Giants, the ACT and Northern Territory.
Where the Northern Rivers fits in to all this remains to be seen but initial plans are to have a team – tentatively called Northern Rivers Football Club– in the QAFL’s Division 2, the Pine-apple Cup.
“The idea of linking Northern Rivers football to the Gold Coast via Coolangatta is a natural one,” Reid said.
“It’s a long-term, five- to 10-year plan to try to engage people who’d like to be involved with footy and see it grow locally and to capitalise on that.
“The thing now, though, is that it’s come at a time of great change on the football landscape.
“We’ll have to see which way the NEAFL will go; whether it will change after one season and, if so, how we might be able to re-model the Pineapple Cup to fit Northern Rivers in.
“It really is a big picture exercise at the moment and there’s a lot of planning still to be done.”
This wouldn’t be the first time local Aussie rules has flirted with Queensland football.
The since-merged Lismore Roos played in the Gold Coast competition in the early 1980s, but it wasn’t pretty.
The Roos were the competition’s whipping boys, part-timers up against seasoned pros.
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