The Y-League – The A-League’s U21 cousin – split into conferences for the 2015/16 season. It has remained this way since, and it hasn’t been a good thing. There are only the 10 teams in the league. Split them into 2 conferences, and make it so that each team plays every team in their conference twice. Once at home once away. But by splitting the 10 in half, it creates odd numbers in the conferences and therefore a bye. In an already short season, each team has 2 byes. Meaning that across 10 weeks, 8 matches are played against 4 teams. Rather than the old system of 18 games across 18 weeks, against 9 teams.
So why is there this system? The FFA’s justification for this was that it “limited travel”. Now that makes sense. A lot of these players are still at school. And the pointy end of school for that matter. If they have an away match on the Saturday morning, they can’t afford to be taking a off school because the plane to Perth leaves Melbourne at 3pm on the Friday.
So why is this a bad thing? Because Perth and Melbourne are in the same conference! This extreme predicament still exists. They craftily named the conferences ‘A’ and ‘B’. When in reality, the conferences are ‘NSW’ and ‘Everywhere Else’. WSW, Sydney, CCM, Newcastle and Canberra make one group. While the other is Melbourne Victory, Melbourne City, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.
After the 10 weeks, the top side from each conference will play each other in a final, and then that is it. In peak summer holidays – when these kids have time to travel around the place playing each other – there is nothing for them to do besides turn up to their A-League team’s home matches in suits as per their contractual agreements.
For the sake of discourse, the conferences have provided 2 winners each in the 4 seasons that the system has been in place. So the conferences are balanced in terms of talent and ability. But when the players only get 8 matches a season, how are they supposed to develop into anything more?
Australian Youth Football 