Sport
19 February, 2025
WFNL, HDFNL set to introduce under-eight football for the 2025 season
The region young footballers can play in structured matches.
The desire to play more structured games at a younger level has encouraged the region's two peak football leagues to establish new age-specific competitions.
The WFNL and HDFNL announced they will introduce an under-eight competition for the upcoming 2025 season.
Operations manager Jennie French said that data presented by AFL Victoria was a reason for the change.
"The data us that the kids are staying in Auskick for less and they wanted more of a structured game," French said.
"it'll be for the kids born in 2017 or before the 30th of April, 2018."
Stawell Warriors president Shane Field sees the addition as a great way to get people involved.
"This is just a stepping stone, which also gets families involved in clubs," Field said.
Field believes the introduction of the under-11 competition in 2024, and the Warriors participation in 'mini league' matches with other clubs caused there to be increased interest in the younger age groups.
"Last year, numerous parents come up to ask to do if there's something else [for] the age group below that, as the under-11 came in," he said.
"We generally participated in that, we got a few kids there and we jumped in with them. Once the families saw that, they got on board and wanted to try and get something going."
The Stawell Warriors held a casual training session for its under-eight's alongside the under-11s at Central Park on Thursday, February 20.
Laharum president Hamish Roberts saw the inclusion of the age group as a 'no-brainer'.
"The data that the AFL presented us, it makes a lot of sense," Roberts said.
"We need to engage kids of that age and get them to fall in love with the game early.
"If they can find that love for the game nice and early, then they will generally stick at it."
And despite the added travel being a 'certain burden', the Wimmera is built of football and netball families according to Roberts.
"Football and netball families are used to to traveling to places, remember Wimmera people are resilient," Roberts said.
If you need to get up early and take a kid across the other side of town or wherever you've got to go to play sport, that's what we do as families.
"Football and netball is such a big part of our local culture that you do it and you make a day of it. I think that's the attitude that a lot of families will will take, and have taken for years gone by."
The introduction of the competition also enables young footballers a pathway through to the senior grades, which would benefit the individual clubs as the 'homegrown' players would be one-point players.
The competition will be run per AFL junior rules.
Matches will be run alongside the under-11s and will consist of four 10-minute quarters with a maximum of nine players per side, with coaches allowed on the field.
Similar to the under-11s, matches will non-scoring.