History
Throughout and after the 1986 season, greater northern Tasmania's two senior football competitions – the Launceston-based Northern Tasmanian Football Association (NTFA) and the north-western coast's North Western Football Union (NWFU) – each lost several clubs to the new TFL Statewide League in 1986. The NTFA had lost North Launceston, East Launceston and City-South: and the NWFU had lost Devonport and Cooee. As a result, the two leagues were wound up, and the Northern Tasmanian Football League was established in 1987 to feature all of the remaining clubs. The NTFL was considered a lower tier than the Statewide League, unlike its predecessors, which were of equal seniority.
After the collapse of the Statewide League at the end of 2000, the northern and coastal clubs from that competition returned to the NTFL and dominated the competition for the next eight years (Burnie and Launceston won the next eight premierships between them). With the revival of the Statewide League in 2009, the same five clubs left the NTFL again (North Launceston, South Launceston, Launceston, Burnie and Devonport), resulting in the contraction of the league to a six-club coastal composition.
In the early years, the NTFL was contested by a mixture of smaller northern and north-western clubs, but the northern clubs gradually departed, and since 2009 the league has been contested solely by clubs from the north-western coast, all with a NWFU history. Consequently, at the end of the 2014 season, the name of the league was changed to the North West Football League (NWFL). [1]
In 2015, Burnie and Devonport rejoined the competition, each fielding its reserves team in the NWFL seniors while continuing to field its senior team in the Statewide League reserves; this increased the league numbers up to eight. [2] In early 2017, Burnie withdrew from this arrangement, which dropped the number of teams down to seven. [3] Then, in 2018, Burnie and Devonport withdrew their senior teams from the Statewide League and each entered the NWFL proper. [4] The league's senior premiership is now contested by seven clubs.
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