What will a National Second Tier mean for the NPL?

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photo: NSW NPL

As the concept of a National Second Tier becomes a reality in Australia, there are questions on what the removal of the biggest clubs will mean for the State League competitions.

Football Australia are still discussing and workshopping the format of the concept, and how it operates and coexists with the National Premier Leagues (NPL) is one of the biggest questions.

When the NPL was created in 2013, the aim was to standardise the State League competitions across Australia and serve as a second tier to the A-League. The competition has been the top division in each state outside the A-League, with the winners playing off against each other at the end of the season.

The NPL hasn’t managed to bridge the gap between the State League clubs and the A-League, shown by the push for a true National Second Tier.

We know that the current NPL clubs would jump at the chance to join a National Second Tier, however, what would this mean for the State Leagues moving forward?

There is certainly commercial value to having South Melbourne and Melbourne Knights play off in the Victorian State League. Without the traditional powerhouse clubs in there, the Victorian NPL would struggle to attract sponsors and fans that drive the clubs, allowing them to perform at a semi-professional level.

Determining what the value of the NPL is without traditional clubs is a question that will be asked across every state competition if a National Second Tier drags them away.

Football Australia has previously floated a Champions League-style competition idea, with 32 teams competing in a group stage format followed by a knockout stage.

The allure of this concept is to reduce the cost of travel and the financial burden on the clubs at the league’s inception while allowing the clubs to continue to play in their respective state NPL competitions.

However, this is a stop-gap solution to get the competition off the ground, with the intention of easing into the transition from semi-professional into a fully professional second tier with promotion and relegation down the track.

There are certainly positives to this structure. Using the Champions League-style format to get the competition off the ground and running before evolving into a traditional league format could be the best way for a National Second Tier to launch.

The reality is that the first few years in a National Second Tier will be difficult for the clubs if the competition is a complete home and away league featuring at least 18 games. It is a distinct possibility clubs will fold, or flee back to the relative safety of their state competitions.

This isn’t a reason not to proceed with the competition, however, it is a danger that the clubs must recognise. To alleviate this danger, clubs can play in their state competitions while featuring in a parallel Champions League-style competition.

Some of the NPL’s biggest clubs would prefer a traditional style home and away season. South Melbourne President Nick Maikousis outlined in an interview with Soccerscene that a National Second Tier could mean some of the biggest clubs depart the State Leagues.

“We don’t agree that a Champions League-style competition is a National Second Division. Our views are that it needs to be a stand-alone competition. The challenge for the state federations is potentially losing some of their biggest member clubs,” Maikousis said.

“If you take South Melbourne, Melbourne Knights, and Heidelberg out of the NPL Victoria competition, it becomes a different conversation.”

He also pointed out that reluctance to lose these clubs from their respective state leagues by some stakeholders is similar to arguments raised against the formation of the National Soccer League in the 1970s.

Fears of losing the State League’s biggest clubs aren’t new. At the NSL’s inception in 1977, the Victorian Premier League forbid its clubs from joining the new competition. Mooroolbark SC, an unremarkable Eastern Suburbs club, broke the deadlock, paving the way for South Melbourne, Heidelberg and Footscray just to follow in their footsteps.

Mooroolbark unfortunately found themselves relegated out of the NSL in their only year in the competition, before ending up in the provisional league at the bottom of the football pyramid by the 1980s.

Eventually, any national second tier competition must become a stand-alone league if Australian football is to have a proper pyramid of competitions featuring promotion and relegation. The state NPL competitions will lose their biggest clubs to this, but it creates opportunities for other clubs to forge ahead and take their place.

Australian football needs to be brave in its attempt to create something that will outlast us all. Countries like England, Spain, and Italy have built their football not only on heritage, but also a deep talent pool developed playing in the leagues below their top division.

Promotion and relegation must be the end game for football if it’s to reach its full potential in Australia. For a club to climb from State League 5 to the A-League, from amateur to professional, is the ultimate expression of the beautiful game.

The state leagues will survive losing their biggest clubs, like they did at the NSL’s inception. The question is what value these competitions still have without their biggest assets.

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Northern NSW Football’s Leadership Program Reaches 98 Graduates as Sport Moves Toward 2027 Gender Parity Targets

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Image Credit: Football Northern NSW

Northern NSW Football has concluded its 2026 Women’s Leadership Program, with 13 participants taking the total number of graduates to 98 women across the region since the program launched in 2023. The five-week program combined online modules with a two-day conference at Rydges Resort in the Hunter Valley, bringing together club volunteers, committee members, administrators and NNSWF staff from Newcastle, Macquarie, Northern Inland and Football Mid North Coast zones.

The program’s growth has been uneven year to year. It launched with two intakes in 2023, drew 25 scholarship recipients in 2024,then settled to 12 in 2025, which brought the cumulative total to 85 before this year’s cohort of 13.

The program was facilitated by Ann Odong, who founded The Women’s Game, Australia’s first dedicated women’s football website, in 2008,and later spent six years as Football Australia’s Media and PR Manager steering the Matildas’ program through multiple World Cups and Olympic Games,before moving into independent consulting work.

A pipeline built against a 2027 deadline

The program fits within a wider set of national targets football and the broader sport sector have committed to reaching within the next twelve months. Football Australia’s Our Game initiative, launched in 2021, set a goal of 50:50 gender parity across players, coaches, administrators and referees by 2027.Separately, the federally backed National Gender Equity in Sport Governance Policy requires all funded national and state sporting bodies to reach 50 per cent women or gender-diverse board directors by 1 July 2027, with funding to be withheld from organisations that fall short.As of the most recent Australian Sports Commission data, 22 per cent of chief executives and 25 per cent of board chairs across 65 federally funded national sporting organisations were women.

Programs built around confidence, networking and committee-level skills, the model NNSWF has run since 2023, are the mechanism most sporting bodies are relying on to close that gap, since board and executive vacancies typically draw from an organisation’s existing pool of committee members, volunteers and administrators rather than external recruitment.

This year’s cohort

University of Newcastle FC’s Charlotte Carey, one of this year’s participants, said the program had given her the confidence to pursue a career in football while developing skills applicable across other areas of her life. Fellow participants included representatives from Cooks Hill United, Westlakes Wildcats, Newcastle Olympic, Lake Macquarie City FC, Western Wolves, Gunnedah and District Soccer Association, Wauchope FC and Stockton Sharks, alongside three NNSWF staff members.

NNSWF Participation and Women’s Football Officer Jamie Bressan said the program had continued to provide women across the game with an opportunity to connect and build leadership skills, with topics covering effective communication, personality styles and team dynamics. Bressan pointed to the network the program builds among participants, drawn from clubs and committees across the region, as one of its central functions rather than the training content alone.

The 2026 cohort’s spread across four zones, Newcastle, Macquarie, Northern Inland and Football Mid North Coast, continues a pattern of the program drawing participants from outside the Hunter region’s largest population centres, consistent with its original design to make the conference and online components accessible to women in regional and remote parts of northern NSW through funded travel and accommodation.

Football SA Extends Sammy D Foundation Partnership Into Third Year for Violence Prevention Round

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Football South Australia will run its fifth consecutive Violence Prevention Round in partnership with the Sammy D Foundation from 3 to 5 July, with junior teams again asked to wear blue armbands throughout the weekend.

The arrangement was formalised in March 2022, when Football SA and the Foundation signed a three-year agreement, funded by SA Power Networks, to deliver the Foundation’s Monkey See, Monkey Do program to more than 7,500 junior members across 52 clubs.The program is a 90-minute session delivered by Sammy D Foundation facilitators focused on changing players’ attitudes toward bullying and violence and educating parents and club members about the impacts of inappropriate sideline behaviours, built around the story of Sam Davis, the 17-year-old South Adelaide junior footballer whose death in a one-punch assault in 2008 led his parents to establish the Foundation.Football SA general manager George Georganas and Foundation chief executive Brigid Koenig confirmed the partnership at its 2022 launch, framing it as a mechanism for improving club culture from junior sidelines upward.

The round has run every season since, expanding in 2023 to incorporate the Federation Cup Final at ServiceFM Stadium,a weekend Football SA dedicated as the Sammy D Violence Prevention Round alongside the Federation Cup Final Day continuing through the 2024 season,when it was again scheduled as a designated round ahead of that year’s Federation Cup Final and shifting from an early blue tape design to the blue armbands used in 2025 and again this year.

A prevention model funded outside government

The Foundation’s programs, including its work with Football SA, are financed through corporate and philanthropic support rather than recurring government funding. Its rollout with Football SA was backed by SA Power Networks, and separate school-based programs in the state’s Far North have relied on grants from philanthropic trusts.Both the Perpetual Foundation’s Kevin Barnes Gift Fund Endowment and the Fred P Archer Charitable Trust have funded the Foundation’s work in that region.

The State Government’s response to the Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, released in December 2025, commits $674 million over ten years to a 136-recommendation reportstructured around themes spanning structural reform, workforce and community education, crisis response, and establishing a foundation for prevention, delivered by Commissioner Natasha Stott Despojaafter four women were killed in the state within a single week in November 2023. The Commission’s focus on domestic, family and sexual violence is distinct from the youth bullying and alcohol-related violence at the centre of Sammy D Foundation programs, but its response includesan expansion of abuse prevention programs to support behavioural change for people who use violence, alongside prevention and awareness activities aimed specifically at young people.

Separately, the Department for Education’s own violence prevention program, developed after a 2022 ministerial roundtable, has directed a $6 million Safe and Supportive Learning Environments Plan of Action toward schools, afterreported violent incidents in South Australian public schools rose 50 per cent in 2023, with more than 13,000 critical incidents recorded that year. The department has since reportedits first decline in secondary school critical incidents in 2024, a 4.5 per cent reduction from 2019 levels, along with a 7.3 per cent fall in suspensions and a 20.8 per cent fall in exclusions in 2025. It also noted thatviolence in primary schools has continued to rise since the pandemic, and that physical violence against teaching staff, the large majority involving primary-aged students, climbed from 273 incidents in 2021 to 662 in 2024.

Evidence from earlier rollouts

Sammy D Foundation programs delivered through junior sport have previously reported strong self-assessed outcomes. An earlier three-year rollout of a related program through SANFL Juniors, a separate competition to Football SA,reached up to 12,800 young players and their families, with 98 per cent reporting increased awareness of the impact of one-punch violence and 89 per cent reporting they avoided a violent situation because of the program.

A national evidence guide on preventing violence through sport, compiled by Our Watch, notes that69 per cent of Australian children and 87 per cent of adults took part in sport or physical activity over a twelve-month period, while also pointing toa lack of research assessing the effectiveness of such approaches, and the need for more robust evaluation of primary prevention programs within sport settings.

Clubs taking part in this year’s round have again been supplied with blue armbands for junior teams, with Football SA and the Foundation asking clubs to share images from the weekend under the round’s official hashtag.

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