THE Northern Tasmanian Junior Football Association has approved a restructure of its age group competitions for the 2016 season.
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The association had 11 clubs, 66 teams and about 1600 kids involved in their rosters this season.
NTJFA president Dale Fraser said the changes were approved by a majority vote at the most recent board meeting.
They will see the NTJFA junior age group start at under-8s from next season and include under-9s and under-10s, instead of the current under-9s, 10s and 11s.
Their youth age competitions will change from under-12, 14 and under-16 to under-11, under-13, under-15 and under-17 competitions.
‘‘We’ve made changes for multiple reasons,’’ Fraser said. ‘‘Under AFL guidelines their preferred age to enter football is under eights so we are going back to that and have under-8s, 9s and 10s in our junior competition.
‘‘Then their preferred pathway is under-12, 14, 16 and 18, with a two-year gap.
‘‘The idea of the gap is that you will have a player playing at the bottom level say in under-13s and the next year he is playing in the right level.
‘‘And the idea is one year they have to work hard to develop skills and the next year they should do well and then repeat the process when they go up to the next age level.’’
Fraser said the NTJFA could not adopt the AFL guidelines per se for under-12, 14, 16 and 18 because the NTFA has an under-19 competition.
‘‘That structure would conflict with under-19s so we decided to go 11, 13, 15 and 17, and the reason we have gone to an under-17 is that for most clubs at under-16 level, they have been struggling for players.
‘‘We think that by going out another year that players who have traditionally played under-16 but don’t want to go to under-19s because of the age gap have been dropping out of footy and we think by extending it out another year we are trying to keep more kids involved in footy.’’
Fraser said the changes had been on the agenda for some time with lots of discussion before the recent vote.
‘‘We are falling in line with what the AFL want to help us hopefully develop kids better,’’ he said.
Fraser said if the NTFA decided to change from an under-19 to an under-18 competition in the future then the NTJFA would revert back to under-12, 14 and 16 age groups to maintain a structured pathway.