Capital Football board endorse independent review of National Premier Leagues

A fully-fledged review of all NPL divisions will led by Suiko Consulting over the next two months, with the sports specialists to conduct data analysis, meetings, workshops and surveys.

Capital Football hope to have an optimal model endorsed by late March, giving clubs 12 months notice to prepare for what the NPL competitions look like in 2022.

The review will focus on Football Australia's XI principles to make sure Capital Football's NPL is nationally aligned to those outcomes and the Performance Gap report.

Those will be looked at in line with local constraints, talent pathways, and access into competitions by clubs - including the structure of the women's league.

Capital Football boss Phil Brown said the review will commence mid-January, with Suiko Consulting to build models that consider community feedback, data analysis and peer benchmarking.

"It's good to check back on the leagues periodically, to consider any changes in demographics, review the data and on field results, as well as changes the happen nationally for the game," Brown said.

"It's to ensure the competitions we're providing are relevant in terms of football nationally but importantly serves the needs of the local community.

"The timing is so we can have an outcome known to the football community when the winter season commences, so there's a full year for people to prepare for what the competitions look like in 2022.

"It's the important thing given on field results contribute to positions in different leagues moving forward."

It comes in the wake of Capital Football axing the Monaro Panthers from the NPLW as part of a competition restructure for 2021.

A disparity of talent and limited fixtures led to Capital Football's decision to cut one NPLW team, making it an eight-team competition with three full rounds.

"There's two parts of the competition that we looked at in 2020 for 2021. They were due to an ongoing, identified problem that we all knew about which was the lopsided scores and differences between the top and bottom teams in NPL Youth and NPLW," Brown said.

"Continuing that known problem for another year was not something Capital Football thought was in the best interests of the game, the clubs and particularly the players in those leagues.

"The other part, particularly in the women's game, was our players were only playing 16 matches a season and that's not enough.

"That was identified in the analysis FA did around their performance gap, our best players aren't playing enough competitive football.

"By going to eight teams with three rounds, we increase the number of matches our best players play by five. They play 21 matches a season instead of 16."

The winter season will commence with NPL Youth on Saturday March 27, followed by NPLW, NPL1 Men's and NPL2 on Saturday April 10.