It seems if any football season is to get up in the Goulburn Valley and its surrounds this year it is going to be a campaign like no other.
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A number of ideas have been thrown up in an attempt to solve the various issues that will arise following the coronavirus sporting shutdown, including conference systems, pushing cricket seasons back and segregating crowds to help with social distancing efforts.
As clarity surrounding a starting date threatens to poke its head above the horizon, more possible changes continue to be mooted.
Tatura's John "JR" Ryan suggested this week that no matter what the seasons may look like, game time should be slashed in Goulburn Valley League.
Quarter lengths of about 16 minutes with time on in senior football and 15 minutes with no time on in reserves would be the way to go, Ryan said.
He said this would help combat a lack of player conditioning, and would likely need to be implemented across Victoria in the back end of the year if seasons were to go ahead.
An abundance of night football could also be on the cards if football gets under way this year — for a number of reasons.
More football under lights could be seen not only as a by-product of increasing the gap between games in order to move patrons out before letting more in if venues are pushing the limits of gathering restrictions, but also as a tool to help squeeze more games into a shortened period of time between a restart and a concrete end-date to wrap campaigns up.
Even if no premiership seasons are able to be staged though, there is still scope to use a ‘Night Series’ to bring money into local clubs and get something out of the year.
Matches could be played midweek under lights, even into cricket season at grounds where there were no turf wickets, as if there were no premiership points on offer it would be a more relaxed vibe.
What many may not know is that what is believed to be the first series of regional matches played under lights in earnest occurred at Katandra, spanning from the early ‘80s until the mid-'90s.
“I was one of the initial people that got it up and going, I was involved from ‘81-85,” Barry Senior said.
“I reckon about ‘94-95 was the last few years of it, it sort of petered out because Barooga and Benalla were running series as well.
“It became a bit too much work out at Katandra.
“But while it was going I think it was a fantastic thing for the community out there.”
The Katandra Night Series — quickly renamed the Goulburn Murray Night Series — was born out of a desire to use new lights at the club to the best of their ability.
“The grounds committee were looking at upgrading the training lights, we got something like a $15 000 grant,” Senior said.
“I thought it was a hell of a lot of money to pay for lights just to train under and not get a return on.
“I was pretty strong on the idea of starting a night series.
“I remember sitting on the back of a Massey Ferguson tractor and discussing it with Dad (Bryan).
“We floated a 16-club knockout, pre-season comp with $100 entry, and it kicked on from there.”
But the idea still needed approval from the club to get off the ground.
“The lights at that time weren't really good enough to play footy under, so Dad went down to Melbourne and bought the extra lights,” Senior said.
“Bill Black, chairman of the grounds committee, was a bit apprehensive about the idea.
“I remember running around and kicking the yellow balls out on the ground to try and convince them, eventually they agreed and said ‘all right go and get the extra lights that we need'.
“Dad said ‘don't worry about it, we've already got them in the back of the car come and help me with them'.”
The series was not without its challenges, but provided a great buzz for the Katandra community.
“After the first year we split it in to two divisions, so the district sides weren't playing the major league teams too much,” Senior said.
“The first night we started we had the lights on and started turning all of the pie warmers and everything on and blew the fuse because we didn't test it with everything going.
“We spent 45 minutes trying to fix it and by the time we did I reckon the crowd was three deep on the fence.
“My sort of selling point to the clubs around the area was that we'd provide the pre-season games and umps and everything so they didn't have to sort their own.
“Over the years there were always a few challenges, we intruded a bit onto the cricket club, but in the end it was a community thing, there were extensions to the facility out of it and everyone benefited from the money generated from the night series.
“I reckon in regional Australia it was the first time night footy was played in any sort of significant series, it wasn't like today where lots of clubs have lights good enough to do it.”
Noel Hussey recalls the first round of the Goulburn Murray Night Series as a fiery one, with Corowa-Rutherglen and Congupna coming to blows.
“Before that night series one ump did the entire game,” Hussey said.
“But we decided to run two umps because while the light was all right, it didn't quite get right down into the pockets, so you needed more than one ump to cover the ground.
“That first night I remember one of the Corowa boys getting stuck into Chris Drum, and I told him if he didn't cut it out I'd send him off.
“He obviously didn't know that we had introduced a send off rule — which we did because we didn't have jurisdiction over all of the players so that when you sent them off, they were done for the night and there was no tribunal — because when he kept going and I sent him off he wasn't very happy!”
Shepparton News editor