FFNC provides various information and commentary below in an effort to provide some clarification about the way forward after an exceptionally disrupted season thus far.
A majority of teams have been barely able to start the season, with multiple senior teams having played only two or three of the seven fixtures that should have ordinarily been completed as at last weekend. Beyond this, the disparity of how many games various teams have completed within each competition, has created a further challenge, to ensure that every team in each competition ultimately plays the same number of games this year. Across 13 senior leagues and 15 junior competitions, this is not a simple objective to achieve.
The FFNC decision to proceed with a modified finals series, provides more scope to schedule more pointscore fixtures, however, there are now only nine (9) playing weekends left to schedule pointscore fixtures for junior teams and up to thirteen (13) playing weekends to schedule pointscore fixtures for senior leagues.
FFNC is aiming to deliver as many games relative to each competition, but the disclosure is made today, that this could necessarily be limited to about ten (10) pointscore games for each junior team this year and about fourteen (14) games for each senior team. Every effort will be made to maximise the number of matches played, but there needs to be equity within each competition, based on the number of games played by each team in the same competition. Note that the number of fixtures to be scheduled will vary for each competition, so please be clear that there is no precise number of fixtures to be delivered for every team, whether junior or senior, meaning that one competition could see ‘x’ number of games played and another ‘y’ number of games.
We highlight that there will be fixtures scheduled to be played variously mid-week and others requiring teams to play more than one match on a given weekend. This might seem contrary to the fact that some teams will not play every weekend, as a consequence of those teams having already played many more games than other teams in the same competition.
Season 2025 will hopefully now see favourable conditions, from this point forward and while a normal football season is no longer possible, we join with everyone who is desperately hoping that the participation experience moving forward is a positive one.
