devo
edbinnie
bvando
Eldo
mickmurphy
Robbo
Hugh Nguyen
Chiefnic
Time Warp
Posted by devo on July 3, 2009
Correspondent Eldo reports that he has just returned from a time warp.
My son plays for Adelaide Uni in a social A grade competition at the Magill campus. The guys running it are on the big side of 60 and they have not been even slightly influenced by the FIVB. (All power to them – got to admire that.)
- They play side out volleyball to 15
- You can’t double hit or lift the serve.
- Serves that hit the net are called faults.
- You touch the net and it is called a net touch.
- Nobody on any of the 3 courts had anything remotely resembling a uniform.
- Players and friends did the flipper boards that were 30 years old (Jack and Connie vintage for the SA people)
- The players called the balls in or out, sometimed with the help of the spectators.
- Every body was smiling, laughing and having a great time.
- I didn’t see anybody blocking the serve which was a pity.
I had a ball watching, and realised on the way home that perhaps the good old days were in fact better.
I bet a million that not one person was a member of VSA or the AVF and, for the money we want these people to play to affiliate, why would they join VSA or the AVF? They pay $4.00 a night for 60 minutes of volleyball. Kids pay $8.00 for their 50 minutes of Junior League.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could entice these people into the volleyball family for a minimum $5.00 fee to VSA and the AVF. We could use people like these all over the country to increase our patheticly low official membership numbers. This would help in grant applications. We could have them on an email list and invite them to league finals, international matches (SA had one in 1998) and we could invite them to AVL matches.
It is indeed a pity that most of our family live outside of our family. These people play volleyball, wear kneepads and love the game just like us. One day when we want to be a big sport, perhaps we will get this right.
One day Devo, please publish the official memberships paid to the AVF by each of our states. It is a JOKE, but well worth the read. We could be Underbelly #4.
Murph said
Don’t be so sure on the membership front Eldo.
Steve said
This is the age old problem that we have … what is the AVF / VSA / VVI / etc value proposition? If you don’t want to play representative or state league volleyball why would you join?
I remember having this discussion all those years ago when I was at VVI while trying to entice volleyball associations to join.
Me: hey, jump on board
Them: why?
Me: well, you can get information on what is happening on the national and international scene.
Them: there are plenty of free subscription services out there, you will have to do better than that.
Me: what about competitions, for you country associations you can play in the country championships
Them: we just want to have a hit once a week, Bendigo/Geelong etc would slaughter us
Me: we offer insurance at competitive rates (struggling)
Them: we have private health insurance that far outweighs your pathetic offering.
Me: All this is well and good, but what if you have players coming up through the ranks who want to play for Victoria? If they aren’t from an association then they won’t be registered and eligible to play.
Them: You mean to tell me you would stop one of our kids playing for Victoria? At any rate we would just get them to play and register at the closest association. Doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.
Me: Ummm…
Them: Yes…
Me: Give me a sec
Them: We are waiting
Me: Ok, got to go.
Unless you control access to the sport this will always be a problem, and volleyball for the most part has done this poorly.
Compare us (in Victoria anyway) to say basketball or netball. Here there is a huge disconnect between the associations (which are largely social) and the state league clubs. In basketball or netball however the state league clubs represent associations. These associations are strong enough and prevalent enough that social players are drawn to them even if they don’t have any intention or dream of playing representative ball. As a result the state association rakes in the cash.
So, to get back to the initial question about how to get these people involved … the answer is you can’t because the volleyball world has nothing to offer them! The only way I can think of, and this will take a long time, is to reverse integrate a state league team into each association, start playing home and away rather than at a central venue and then stick with it until the general association members begin to feel like the team is theirs.
The negative of course is that you lose the dynamic that arises from having all the state league people in one place. Clearly the need is there to weigh the benefit of the two up. One thing we wanted to try while I was at VVI was offer teams the opportunity to have a home base and allow them an opprtunity to develop a home crowd and community support. Falcons (and maybe Mornington, I forget) were the only ones who wanted to pursue it and that wasn’t enough to enable us to reduce our central hall hire charges. It is my only regret from the time I was there.
Batesy said
Your idea of state league clubs representing the association(s) is a very good one, but would be extraordinarily difficult to implement. If VVI ever chose to undertake such a task it would likely see things get worse before they got better, but I think the eventual benefits would make it all worthwhile.
Something would probably need to be done to entice both the clubs and the associations into making such a big commitment in aligning with one another… [I could go on for hours] … eventually it would lead to the state leagues being the volleyball equivalent of the VFL, which could hopefully have the effect of boosting AVL into the realms of a proper national league!
edbinnie said
This is actually what you have in NSW.
Each association runs social comps (some very profitably) and then use that money to subsidise their State League programmes (and even AVL). We still have very restricted membership though, because associations continue to settle with what they are doing, and lots of gyms run volleyball comps for profit outside of the SVNSW frame work.
NSW still has it’s state league all in one place, and the associations do get supporters (generally only at finals) to come watch, although its not hugely different to other state leagues where friends and families come to watch.
Steve said
ps, long enough for you? now back to work (finding this site ain’t helping my productivity!)
devo said
Good to see you out of volleyball “retirement” mate. Must be G time?
Steve said
Thank you sir… I think this is about as close to being involved as I will get for a while though!
Hugh Nguyen said
Ahhhh good old Brian Raymond runs the comp. It IS the continuation of the “teachers college” comp when Magill was a teachers college. It is the Primordial ooze from which sprang a lot of the teachers that went on to grow the game. I played there for about 13 years. We had a “family” team that was passed on from my dad, to my sister to me. A lot of fond memories and a lot of those guys have been playing there for 20+ years. Johann Olesk who used to coach the women’s national team is still involved up there. It was only a cuple of yrs ago that the price went from $3 a game to $4. it had stayed at $3 for ages.
They used to hand out forms for VSA membership but haven’t but don’t anymore.
Why would you bother? What value do they offer to be part of “the family”. there’s no value proposition there.
Does Volleyball SA care that it’s not relevant to people that run these comps? who knows. What other comps are there “out of the family”. that are “non-canonical”. that live in the “volleyball black market”?
Well there’s Goodwood. Golden Grove after the Trojons folded from State League. Then Marion (recently). there’s not much left. Maybe they don’t need to worry because their beach centres are the profit centres.
but eldo’s got a point. volleyball isn’t in a healthy state. and if things get worse, there’s not much choice but to turn to family for help.