I said it in my round review on May 1, and I'll be saying it again in tonight's review - you need a South Island Premier Women's League.
In Dunedin, it's a five-team comp - Dunedin Technical, Otago University, Roslyn Wakari, Dunedin Tech Reserves, Varsity Reserves.
In other words, two teams are in there just to make up the numbers.
I don't care how they go about it, but for the good of women's football, Mainland Football and Football South need to pool their resources and introduce a SI PWL sharpish, comprising Dunedin Technical, Otago University, Roslyn Wakari, Cashmere Technical, Coastal Spirit and Tasman United, who are proving quite competitive in their maiden MPWL campaign.
While that's running, the MPWL can continue with Canty Univs, FC, Halswell, Parklands, Waimak, Western and the reserve teams of Cashmere and Coastal. The winner of that comp (or, if one of the reserve teams wins it, the best-placed first team) plays the winner of the FS PWL at season's end, with the winner of that play-off taking on the bottom-placed team in the SI PWL in a promotion-relegation play-off.
No ifs, buts or maybes. Something along the lines of the above has to happen. Preferably yesterday. How it's funded is up to the federations - as noted above, they need to pool their resources and do something to grow the women's game. If they want to run an equivalent comp for their men's teams at the same time, fine - as an aside, that's something which should have happened a few years back, not to put too fine a point on it.
But the priority has to be the introduction of a South Island Premier Women's League. Otherwise you'll be seeing more of these sorts of scorelines. And I think it's safe to say we don't want that.
Cheers,
JR