Launceston Tornadoes plan to tick off the latest SEABL-backed proposal to shorten the season and get rid of the conference system in the name of greater equity.
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But the women’s club has expressed concerns over possible changes to player restrictions that could favour rival teams that are affiliated to the WNBL season.
The Tornadoes verbally agreed to a raft of changes for next year in what Basketball Australia general manager Paul Maley told Fairfax Media of overwhelming support from all SEABL clubs.
“They are also reducing WNBL season,” Launceston chair Janie Finlay said.
“So what they are doing is for athletes that play 12 months, they get two distinct seasons with some recovery and downtime.”
The upside would be that prospective Opal Lauren Mansfield, who has been pulled out of the Tornadoes, will commit to national duties outside of club games.
Under latest Basketball Australia plans, the WNBL will finish about two months prior to the SEABL season.
“So we’ll actually get a preseason with the players,” Finlay said.
“Because what’s happening is that we will get contracted players that finish their WNBL season.
“But they might have to turn up a week later, start playing and they have not embedded into the team.”
While WNBL player restrictions over their number of minutes will remain, the SEABL have tabled a change to classifications to improve the standard of the SEABL.
The Torns this year were robbed of WNBL-restricted player Ally Wilson returning in spite of her strong development at Launceston.
The SEABL proposal would mean that players of 60 games over three consecutive seasons are classified unrestricted to that one club.
“We have a position that it’s fantastic for us because we can put an offer out to an Ally Wilson again as a part of our make-up,” Finlay said.
“However, a club like Dandenong may have hundreds of players who have played 60 consecutive games, so they could have a full [stronger] unrestricted list.”
The Tornadoes intends to put forward that clubs maintain three restricted, contracted players with a further two locally-developed unrestricted players of 60 games over the three-year period.
The scrapping of the south and east conferences in favour of a united competition will ensure sides can’t qualify for finals finishing with less wins in a weaker conference.
In turn a 22-game season will be reduced to 20 for the 15-team women’s competition that will follow a floating AFL model fixture based on the previous year’s results.
Finlay said hosting one less home game also won’t affect the Torns financially.
“If its an equal loss of home and away games, we make our money at home so we can pay to go on the road anyway,” she said.
So we’ll actually get a preseason with the players
- Tornadoes chair Janie Finlay