2019 Senior Competition draw released

The AFL North Coast Senior Competition draw has been released for what will be a bumper year of footy in the region.

Northern Beaches Blues (formerly Woolgoolga Blues) are welcomed back to the competition after a 13 year hiatus. The Blues will field a team in Reserve Grade in 2019 and have also joined forces with the Grafton Tigers to enter a joint venture Women’s team. These exciting developments mean that all four grades will comprise four teams.

Paul Taylor, Community Football Manager, said that the second consecutive year of growth in Senior footy had been extremely well received. “At a time when most sports are struggling to maintain their numbers in regional areas, the advent of a new club and new teams has generated real excitement within the Senior competition.

“Our Junior Competition has experienced unparalleled growth in the past three years and this is now starting to extend to the Senior Competition.”

Northern Beaches and Grafton will play all of their matches at the same venue each week, meaning that the two clubs will share home grounds and will travel together. Rivals Sawtell Toormina Saints and Coffs Harbour Breakers have each foregone one home match against Grafton/Northern Beaches to ensure that there’s plenty of AFL content in each location which will help greatly with future growth in both areas.

“The season hasn’t even started yet and already the hallmark of 2019 is clubs working together to grow the code. Experience tells us that this is the single biggest factor to achieving sustainable growth and the clubs are to be commended for the mature approach that each has adopted,” Taylor said.

Key features of the 2019 season include:

• Sawtell Toormina Saints unfurling the 2018 Premiership flag at Richardson Park in round 1 (13 April) when they host the Port Macquarie Magpies.
• The introduction of the Northern Beaches/Grafton joint venture Women’s team which will take on Coffs Harbour Breakers in their first competitive outing in round 1 (13 April) at Ellem Oval, Grafton.
• The return of Senior AFL to Centennial Oval, Woolgoolga in round 4 (11 May) when Northern Beaches Blues and Grafton Tigers host Coffs Harbour Breakers.
• Four matches of footy in each of two locations in every round of the season, with the first match starting at 10:00am and the last match finishing at 5:00pm.
• A three week Finals Series in each grade starting on Saturday 24 August.
• The Grand Finals of each grade being staged at the revamped C.ex Coffs International Stadium on Saturday 7 September.

The season gets underway on Saturday 13 April. The full draw is available here.

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