FORMER Heywood Football Netball Club president Craig Keating has been inducted as the inaugural life member of AFL Barwon recently, receiving the honour at the commission’s recent Annual General Meeting in late November.

Keating spent a decade as chair of the commission – which oversees three football and netball leagues (Geelong FNL, Bellarine FNL and Colac & District FNL) along with junior football, female football and representative football and netball competitions – and finished up in the role at the end of 2022.

Prior to his appointment to that role, he was president of Heywood Football Netball Club for 15 years and served as delegate to the Western Border Football League for two decades, and was chair of the board of the WBFL when it formed in the early 2000s.

Keating said it was “both an honour and a surprise” when he was announced as the commission’s first life member.

“I feel very humbled by it… in all fairness I’m probably the only one eligible at this stage because we settled on a 10-year tenure in order to be up for the honour and I think I’m the only one to be there that long so far.

“I had to learn an awful lot very quickly when I first took on the role, I always knew the value of community sports from my time working (as chair) with the Western Border.

“I guess you can get into the mindset that the grass is always greener, and I know when I was with the Western Border you’d look to Geelong and think how fortunate they are and how easy it must be.

“But when I got here, I soon found that while when it’s a bigger region it looks like it’s easier to run things, but at the end of the day the problems are still problems, they’re just different here than they are there.

“The most difficult part of it was getting it started, especially as it was something new and very different from the way people had done things before.

“I think you learn quite quickly that not all good ideas are good ideas to everyone, and trying to cater to all those different viewpoints became one of the big challenges of the role.”

Keating was at the helm during one of the most unique and difficult years for not just local sport but the community generally, those being the years of the COVID pandemic especially through 2020 and 2021.

He said having one overarching body which was able to make the calls regarding when to stop and resume play during those unprecedented times.

“We made the calls in such a way that everyone was in agreement and so that leagues weren’t in competition with one another I suppose,” he said.

“We could see locally the toll COVID was taking on local clubs, and so I think if the calls on those important issues like what our protocols were for returning were being made from five or six bodies rather than one then it could have been disastrous.

“Our clubs got through COVID really well, some perhaps even got stronger through the whole experience.”

Keating said he believed one of the best rules the commission had put in place was player points and salary cap, which he said helped to ensure there wasn’t a “race to the bottom” when it comes to player payments.

“Whenever you’ve got four or five leagues in close proximity to one another there could be a temptation for a club to take advantage of the situation at another club.

“At the end of the day what we don’t want to see is clubs getting into an arms race with one another with big money on the table which can then mean other aspects of the organisation are compromised as a result.

“We were one of the first areas to introduce netball salary caps as well, it’s a tool clubs can use to put limits on how much money is going out the door with player payments.

“In years gone by, I’d seen coaches and recruiters go out and promise money to players and then come back to the club and have them go out and look for a way to finance that.

“I certainly witnessed situations where clubs ended up signing up to hand out more money than they ended up being able to raise… now the process is reversed, and clubs go to the recruiters and tell them how much money they have to work with.”

While most of his attention has obviously been elsewhere for several years now, Keating said he maintains a strong connection to his home club.

“I certainly keep up with how things are going over there and celebrate the successes the club has,” he said.

“I think my time with the Western Border league during its heyday held me in really good stead for the role with AFL Barwon.

“I suppose as a life member of that league I’m probably a little bit biased but I think it’s a shame what the league has become now since Portland, Heywood and Hamilton departed.”