THE AFL’s aggressive campaign to forge a foothold in NSW is dominating the national sports media at present with plans to launch a second elite Sydney team a hot topic.

But those efforts also include work at the grassroots level.

Aussie rules is using its strong Auskick program to continue its growth in the region this year and on Saturday it was Tamworth’s turn to host an Auskick inter-club gala day for under 8 to under 12 teams.

“We have kids from our three Auskick centres, which are Tamworth, Armidale and Inverell,” AFL north west development officer Evan Griffiths said.

“This is Tamworth’s turn to host the gala day.

“Armidale held the last one and before that Inverell and this is the first year it’s

happened.

“We’d like to do it every week but because of travel, if we do it every six weeks the kids get to play some competitive games against other teams and by taking it to the different centres we spread it around a bit.”

One only needs to look at the Armidale club to see how the game has grown at junior level in recent years.

Armidale Auskick co-ordinator Craig Collins said numbers are the highest they’ve ever been and gala days like the one held at Tamworth’s No.1 Oval will only help attract more players.

“We’ve grown phenomenally in the last three or four years,” he said.

“Four years ago we started with 12 kids and now we’ve got 80-odd.

“Coming to these gala days is a real highlight because they get to compete against other sides in matches.

“We’ve had friendly games with sides on the coast and they play every week over there but it’s hard for us because of the travel.

“So it’s a real highlight to do this.”

Like the other centres, Armidale runs a weekly session on Saturdays where the kids learn and practise the skills of the game before moving on to the gala days.

But the gala days are probably not the biggest event of the year, with some lucky players given the chance to play at the Sydney Cricket Ground earlier in the year in conjunction with a Swans game.

“We took 27 down to the SCG this year, three teams of nine,” Collins said.

“That gave most of the kids in our centre the chance to play on the SCG which is a big highlight for them.”

The next step is to increase player numbers in the five to 12 age groups currently catered for and possibly the number of centres involved but another major challenge is providing an avenue for older players.

“We’ve got a few things going like under 14 inter-school games and we’ve tried a few under 16 games,” Collins said.

“We’re trying to bridge that gap between the kids and the seniors, which is the problem.

“These kids are going to need somewhere to go.”

The Tamworth AFL competition took a break on the weekend which allowed the kids to take centre stage.

The local league is back next weekend though with a full round of matches

scheduled.

Organisers of the junior program hope that local senior teams will one day be full of its Auskick products.