“Lock him in for seniors this year.”
“It’s just scrimmage, mate, doesn’t mean anything ’til the real thing starts.”
It’s something where you obviously can’t rely on external feedback to form an opinion on the pre-season action in front of you. You have to decide on your own: whether it’s reflective of the intensity of the winter months or not, is this the time to get invested?
Around these parts, there would be a relatively easy way to help up the ante.
Stakes. Actual practice match stakes. This is the right time of year to say something about them, after all.
In 13 previous editions of Premium Wednesdays, all self-referential language has been kept off these pages — a purist move, of course.
Nonetheless, the recent news that an edition of this column from last August won an AFL Victoria media award meant a great deal personally, as did the many expressions of support in the following days.
The subject of that particular column? Post-season playoff formats for premiership-winning clubs.
It feels especially poignant and timely, then, to talk about whether you could just condense that idea into this time of year instead as clubs are ramping up their workloads ahead of season launch in a couple of weeks.
For now, let’s call it the Northern Super Cup.
It’s a simple premise: the Goulburn Valley League, Murray, Kyabram District and Picola District premiers from the previous year face off in a series of games during pre-season to determine an overall titleholder heading into the new campaign.
Sure, it sounds lopsided on the face of it right now, given that Echuca has been virtually unshakeable since the pandemic subsided. Is that its fault though?
Obviously, if it took place this year, your clubs would be Echuca, Congupna, Murchison-Toolamba and Waaia.
The Murray Bombers would naturally be a top seed, but The Road come in off a galvanising, drought-breaking flag bolstered by the likes of Kyle Mueller, while Murchison-Toolamba went undefeated in 2024 and Waaia — just like Echuca — is gunning for four straight Picola District flags.
The idea is inspired by some of the rather intriguing combinations we’ve seen meeting for a hit-out across the past few weeks, such as Cobram and Shepparton locking horns this past weekend.
Regardless of the lack of points or positions on the line, it’s exciting to see some different names and faces doing battle — so why wouldn’t you take the chance to match each competition’s best while teams are swapping usual dance partners out anyway?
You could do it either as a straightforward single-elimination tournament across two weekends or as a round-robin across three to give everyone equal playing time against the sharpest around.
It seems like the doors have well and truly flung open up on the border, anyway, following Yarrawonga’s weekend sport and music exhibition which saw a raft of clubs from leagues near and far, including several GVL and Murray league entities, converging for the day.
The Gather Round-like spectacle — itself a concept floated in The News for GVL consideration during the 2024 season — seemed to uncork all-new possiblities for inter-league mingling.
Surely after looking at it through that lens, this seems like a perfectly doable idea, right?
Echuca has shed a few of its dynastic premiership core from the past handful of years, while the Picola competition looks the most truly wide open it has in many a moon.
A 2026 Northern Super Cup pitting, say, Cobram and Shepparton — worthwhile suggestions given their recent face-off — in the mix with Murchison-Toolamba and maybe even a Strathmerton or a Katandra?
The possibilities are many, the logistics more than palatable.
It seems like the natural next step now is to survey some of the top clubs on whether there’s a level of interest in the idea, no?
They might go for it, they might not, but it feels like time to gauge whether there’s a basis in reality according to the people who’d actually figure to be involved.
Watch this space.
