The Ballarat Football League is set to join the Central Highlands competition and go head-to-head with the AFL’s venture into regional Victoria next year.
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AFL Goldfields commercial and regional operations manager Aaron Nunn said the BFL will play matches on Saturday, August 19 – the same day as the Western Bulldogs’ historic round 22 encounter at Eureka Stadium.
The Bulldogs will take on Port Adelaide in the first AFL game for premiership points in Ballarat.
Nunn said there had been plenty of discussion about whether or not the league would take a break to allow the AFL game to take centre stage, but it has been decided to go ahead with round 17 games on that day because of other fixturing around the region.
In its draft fixture, the CHFL has scheduled its first week of finals on August 19 and 20.
The Western Bulldogs’ game has been given an afternoon timeslot, with the first bounce locked in for 1.45pm.
This will force many fans to choose between local football and the AFL game.
Meanwhile, AFL Goldfields hosted a junior football summit on Sunday to address a number of key issues throughout the region.
Members from the Ballarat, Central Highlands, Maryborough Castlemaine District and Riddell District competitions were at Saxon House for the meeting, which saw three main topics discussed.
Nunn said behaviour standards, player exemptions and the junior interleague program were the areas of focus.
“With behaviour this year, we probably had a few crowd-related incidents that sort of raised a few questions around how we deal with those incidents as and when they arise internally,” Nunn said.
“So it was just a good idea to share some experiences and then go through some process stuff on how we should actually deal with them.”