Despite intervention from Northern NSW Football, five Armidale-based soccer clubs have signalled their intention to break away from the sport's governing body in favour of a new, independent competition this year.
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South Armidale, Norths United, East Armidale, Armidale City Westside and Demon Knights are hoping to play in a new tournament run by the University of New England after becoming disgruntled with Northern Inland Football.
A crisis meeting was called earlier this month after the peak body for competitions within the top-half of the state including NIF, Northern NSW Football, learned of the discord among the clubs.
Administrators, including chief executive officer David Eland, from NNSWF made their way to Armidale on February 11 to address the clubs' issues.
Three main concerns were put forward to NNSWF by the clubs - a lack of consultation from NIF regarding the new Northern Conference senior competition structure for the 2020 season, communication breakdown between the organisation and the clubs and inconsistent action of disciplinary regulations.
"By and large we were just there to listen," Eland said.
"I reaffirmed we were involved now and it was the first we had heard of it and we were going to do whatever we could to keep the game united.
"What was agreed was that we would go back to the clubs within seven days with our initial response, which we did, we went back to them and we provided them with an online survey so they could give some feedback about the competition structure."
The Tuesday following the meeting the survey, along with changes, were distributed and clubs were given until Sunday, February 23 to complete it.
The results which came back from the survey were unexpected.
"What is really disappointing, from our perspective, is that four of the local clubs decided to inform us on our online survey they would disaffiliate and go to UNE," Eland said.
"As you can imagine, that was pretty discouraging to us over the last couple of days.
"To have four of them dismiss the process by coming back in an online survey and saying 'we know what we agreed to but we are going to UNE' is extremely discouraging to say the least.
"I certainly hope they have engaged their members because if they haven't engaged their members and haven't gone through the full ramifications of this decision, that is hypocritical."
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Eland admitted NNSWF were not aware of the friction between the clubs and NIF but when they learned of it, they stepped in.
"We weren't aware of what was going on and some of the concerns, NIF and ourselves agree, are justified so we have got to respond," Eland said.
"My board have been informed about it, I have taken responsibility, NIF have responded by changing their management structure.
"The competition administrators have changed and they will be reporting through to my operations manager and we have oversight of what is going on up there and I just don't know what more we can do."
NIF's general manager Julia Farina will now report to NNSWF operations manager Liam Bentley.
Toby McVey has been appointed as the administrator for the northern region.