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Promotion and relegation between NPL and State League 1 is under new management after a Football Federation Victoria shake-up.
The departures of four key personnel as part of the governing body’s “restructure process” means the engineers of the promotion-relegation model will no longer oversee the process.
Head of competitions Liam Bentley, pictured, and general manager of legal, regulatory and compliance and general counsel Richard Redman are set to depart this week, while chief financial officer (CFO) Chris Brophy and general manager of football operations Matthew Annells left last week.
TCF understands all four accepted redundancy offers.
Bentley and Annells in particular were involved in setting up FFV’s promotion-relegation model, a process which was set to officially start in a month’s time.
Bentley ends a 10-year association with the FFV having started in 2007 as competitions coordinator. Having been in numerous roles since then, he became head of NPL in 2014, overseeing the competition’s teething process, the addition of Murray United, Nunawading City, Moreland City and Eastern Lions – and the subsequent splitting of NPL2 into two conferences – and was the driver of the framework for promotion-relegation with State League 1.
With the exodus of executives and management, FFV President Kimon Taliadoros recently tweeted a job advertisement for a role of ‘executive manager – legal, regulatory and finance’.
The process of considering NPL-State League 1 promotion-relegation, as lined out by an official FFV document, stated expressions of interest were to close June 1, with pre-qualification checklists to be submitted by June 30, and final league structures to “be confirmed within 28 days of the conclusion of the NPL season”.
Leadership role for #thebeautifulgame in Victoria: EXECUTIVE MANAGER – LEGAL, REGULATORY & FINANCE https://t.co/36ODKTvp6P
— Kimon Taliadoros (@KimonTaliadoros) May 3, 2017