Bendigo league to appeal Gisborne’s bid to move to Ballarat

GISBORNE Football Netball Club’s bid to switch leagues lies in the hands of AFL Victoria, after the Bendigo Football Netball League confirmed it would appeal the Bulldogs’ transfer request to the Ballarat league.

The Bendigo league’s move comes less than a week after Gisborne members emphatically endorsed the move to the Ballarat league in a vote.

The vote was 193 to 20 in favour of the move, with 11 members abstaining.

In a separate vote a week earlier, the Ballarat league board and clubs voted 46-4 in favour of the Bulldogs entry.

The Bendigo league announced it intention to appeal Gisborne’s move in a statement released late Wednesday afternoon.

“The BFNL remains steadfast in believing that the Gisborne FNC is an integral part of the league’s competition and community and is committed to pursuing all available avenues to ensure the club’s continued participation in the BFNL,” the statement read.

“The BFNL has a responsibility to safeguard the strength, stability and sustainability of the league and given Gisborne FNC’s reputation within the BFNL, we believe their ongoing involvement is important to the health of our clubs, players, volunteers and supporters.

“The BFNL will continue to follow the relevant AFL Victoria processes.”

Gisborne FNC president Tony Brancatisano said the Bendigo league’s response was fully expected.

“We’ll move to the next step now and work our way through the next part of the system,” he said.

“AFL Victoria will look at it and see what it thinks need to be done.

“I’m not worried. We, as a club, have already started working on it.

“We hope AFL Victoria looks on us favourably. When we originally put in our submission, we hadn’t got to a club vote, so that part of it wasn’t in it.

“Ballarat still hadn’t voted, but the submissions had to be in well before that.”

Brancatisano reiterated the members and in particular players had spoken and were vigorously supportive of the mood.

“It’s not a very healthy exercise if you don’t want to be somewhere,” he said.

“At the end of the day, the club belongs to the members and they have voted.

“We expected this (BFNL announcement), but we were already working hard in the background.”

Brancatisano said the club’s bigger focus was on this weekend’s first week of finals.

The Bulldogs have their senior football and A-grade and A-reserve netball teams involved in qualifying finals on Saturday, and their under-18 football and 17-and-under netball teams in elimination finals on Sunday.

Two netball teams – B-grade and B-reserve – finished as minor premiers and will not make an appearance to the second week of finals.