Legal football will no longer be a game for young adults this season, with the AFL, NRL and ACT agreeing to phase out it from their competition.
Key points:The AFL and NRL have come out in support of legal footballThe ACT has moved ahead with its own legal football league, the ACT Football League (AFP)It is expected to start in 2020The AFL is expected in 2019 to make its AFL Cup return to the ACT, while the NRL is likely to follow suit in 2020.
The decision is the latest blow to an old sport that has been dominated by young people in recent years.
The AFL announced last month it would not field a legal football competition in 2019, and the ACT was expected to follow the same path in 2020 as well.
The ACT Football Association was formed in October to bring back the game, with officials from the AFL and the NRL due to be on hand for the announcement on Thursday.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time,” ACT Football president Michael Beane told News.
Comscore legal football was introduced in Australia in 2017, and it was only in the last couple of years that it gained a foothold.
In March, it was the first legal league to field a team.
But a number of issues had been raised with the sport, including the lack of a formal structure for teams and players.
In October, Beane said it was time for a new era in the sport.
“I don’t think we’ve had a lot of success in our time in terms of getting people into it,” he said.
“So I think the focus is on a fresh start, a new culture and we are going to start to see a lot more teams in the ACT.”
Beane said the league had been approached by a number players who were interested in starting a team, but they needed more time to get into it.
“It’s a long-term project, and I think we are very confident that we are ready to go,” he told Newscom.com’s Rugby Talk podcast.
“But we are not ready to announce a date just yet, and we need to see how that goes.”
In the meantime, we are happy to help people get involved and help them get involved in a new sport, if they have any interest in it.”AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan said the new league would provide a chance for younger people to participate in the game.”
Our aim is to get the game played on a wider scale,” McLachlansaid.”
As a sporting organisation, we want to make sure our players and supporters are involved, and they are getting a game they love, in a safe and responsible environment.
“When we started, we didn’t have a great idea of how the game was going to play out, and our players didn’t really know what it was going the other way around.”
They were the ones who were coming in, so it was a little bit naive and it took a little while for them to get comfortable with the way we had set up the competition, but we’re pleased that they are coming back and we hope they enjoy it.
“Topics:australian-football-league,sport,austria
