By The Corner Flag @cornerflagoz

www.cornerflag.com.au

The Corner Flag sat down with the head of the NPL and WPL Liam Bentley last week to discuss some of the issues and goings on around Victorian football, in both the men’s and women’s game.

Over the next few days we will bring you the full interview in stages, and the first part covers all things NPL at senior level.

With the NPL hitting it’s halfway mark for the season, how have you seen it so far? 

It’s gone really well to be honest. I’ve said to anyone that will listen, the day I got given the NPL portfolio that if you told me that we’d be here in June, I’d have bitten your hand off for where we are. I think it’s been a credit to the clubs to be honest. They had a really short turnaround and there’s been teething problems but I’m really happy with where it’s at just now.

I think most clubs, if you could have said where could be and what kind of league we would have and the way the clubs have been set up, said that in January/February we’d have this by June I think they would’ve jumped at the chance as well.

Which team/players have caught your eye so far?

To be honest Avondale Heights for me have been a massive shock. I went to watch them in the State League Playoff last year, and then when they got into the NPL I thought well, they’ll slot into NPL1 and they’ll be a decent team in there. Now, they are ten points ahead of everyone and going for promotion. It really is fantastic and obviously they have got the big game against Bulleen in the coming week.

I think also it’s hard to look past South Melbourne. They have got one of the youngest squads in the NPL and to go 14 games in the league and cup unbeaten, it’s hard to look past them. But it’s been interesting, a couple of little teams, Ballarat and Goulburn Valley Suns, everyone was asking questions about them. GVS is struggling a little bit but Ballarat have caused a few upsets, a few surprises so it’s good to see them doing well as well.

Do you think it was right to expose Ballarat and Goulburn Valley Suns to top flight football straight away?

I think so, the step had to be taken. Ballarat have proven that it can work, being to Ballarat and to the stadium up there, it’s a massive football town and they will go from strength to strength. I genuinely believe that. Goulburn Valley Suns, it’s a little bit different up there. They weren’t a club to start with, that’s where Ballarat had the leg up but per head of population there’s more footballers playing in Shepparton than there is in any other regional centre, so it’s a massive football town and we need a focal point up there.

Whether that focal point in going to stay in NPL or drop to NPL1 over the next couple of years will be left to the competition but I think it’s important for the kids in Shepparton to have something to aim for because a lot of quality footballers come from Shepparton so it was a slight risk, but it’s certainly not been a failure. It’s been very good in Ballarat and having that foot in the door straightaway in Shepparton is going to be a big step in the long run.

On the crowd front, have you been happy with the number of fans turning up to games so far this season?

It’s one of my genuine focuses, the match day experience. The crowds at the start were massive, such as in the first game for Heidelberg against South, where we got a bit of criticism for having a Thursday night game, but I think the proof presented itself in the pudding in terms of having three and a bit thousand people at the game.

The league will play a big part in [the success of crowd numbers]. At the moment South Melbourne are very far in front, and we don’t have finals in 2014, so it becomes less of an attractive prospect to go and watch a team. That’s definitely a factor. Long term that probably won’t be a factor, because we’ll have a conversation about finals in coming years.

I think looking at the match day experience itself, that’s something that we can really improve on. We’re trying to make professional clubs, and they want to act and be treated professionally but we don’t have match day programmes around the grounds; a lot of us don’t announce the goalscorers; we don’t play a bit of music before the game; we don’t have a scoreboard that works. That’s the type of stuff that will make people walk away from an NPL game thinking: ‘Wow, that was NPL, I’ve been at a different level of football now’.

We’ve got a bit of work to do with that in terms of standardising certain things like the match programmes and announcements etc. but we want it to be organic as well. We don’t want to tell the clubs ‘here’s your match day programme, you have to announce this, this and this’. We want the Melbourne Knights to do it the Melbourne Knights way. We want Green Gully to do it the Green Gully way, but we do want it to happen. We’ll be looking into it over the next couple of months but once we get to Round 1 in 2015, people are going to turn up to a game thinking ‘wow this is different! It’s better than what it used to be’.

The crowds aren’t great, we’re never going to get 10-15,000 turning up to a Premier League match in Victoria anymore, but there’s nothing to say we can’t get regular crowds of 800-1500 to our games. The financial windfall that brings for clubs is quite significant as well, and that’s more money that they can not only put into the players but into the infrastructure of the club, the coaching of the club and basically help raise that bar as well.

Click here to read The Corner Flag's full interview with Liam Bentley, including Part 2.