A JUNIOR football coach says he will never carry the clipboard again after his side was penalised for winning a match by too many points.
Two clubs in Western Australia’s Southern Districts Junior Football Association (SDJFA) were not awarded competition points for recent victories because their winning margins were deemed too big. This outraged Albany Eagles coach Russ Clark, whose Under-13 team won a game by 95 points.
Various junior leagues across the country have capped winning margins so losing sides aren’t demoralised by poor results. The WA Football Commission (WAFC) introduced a rule in 2008 that put the ceiling of winning margins at 60 points for the Under-12s through to the Under-16s so youngsters wouldn’t become disheartened and stop playing football.
Clark says he will never coach again because of the penalty.
“I can assure you I will never coach again, and maybe even from today onwards,” he said, per the ABC. “It’s not fun anymore.
“They couldn’t get a coach at the start of the year for this side because people don’t want to do it.”
Clark penned a column for the Albany Advertiser detailing the extra measures he took to ensure his team limited its scoring when it became clear it was the dominant outfit:
— ONE player who kicked three of the team’s five second quarter goals was moved to full-back for the second half
— CLARK played his troops out of position, using four different ruckmen, four different full-backs, four different half-backs, four different half-forwards and four different midfield rotations
— PLAYERS who kicked goals were regularly moved into the backline
— THE player voted by the umpires as best on ground spent the third quarter on the bench
— CLARK’S second best player was moved to the wing to keep him out of the play after he kicked two goals from the forward pocket
Clark says the penalty of stripping points is unfair to the entire club because his team may miss out on the finals because of it. He also says he and other coaches of stronger sides do their best to achieve close results and is now “at a loss to know how I can further embrace ‘the spirit of the game’” after the latest decision.
A junior Mount Barker team also had its points stripped after winning a match by 75 points.
WAFC acting general manager of engagement Troy Kirkham said winning has to be “secondary to the development of the player” while SDJFA president Michael O’Dea was happy with the penalty.
“We as a committee, we had sort of had enough,” he said, per the ABC. “It’s basically a warning, I suppose, to the coaches to say, ‘Just slow down a bit, curb your ways.’”
West Coast Eagles premiership player Peter Wilson last month slammed the “mercy rule”, saying tough losses only made him more determined to become a better player.
“I’ve been in a lot of games where we’ve been towelled up,” Wilson said. “I wasn’t happy about it, but has it left any scars because we weren’t that good? Absolutely not. Did it teach me to be a bit stronger and try a bit harder? Absolutely.”
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