NPL Western Australia Betting Tips

About NPL Western Australia

The National Premier Leagues Western Australia is a semi-professional Australian football league composed of teams from Western Australia.

In the Western Australian league system, the NPL Western Australia is the highest level (Level 2 of the overall Australian league system.

The competition is administered by Football West, the state's governing body for the sport. Formerly known as the Football West State League Premier Division, the league was rebranded in 2014.

History

In 1896, the Perth British Football Association formed the NPL WA.

A new name was given to the association by the 1950s: Western Australian Soccer Football Association (WASFA). In 1960, eight teams formed the Soccer Federation of Western Australia (SFWA).

Between 1960 and 1962, WASFA and SFWA ran rival leagues before the SFWA prevailed. In 1991, 11 SFWA clubs broke away to form the Soccer Administration of Western Australia (SAWA).

In parallel with the SFWA first division, the SAWA ran the rebel Professional Soccer League (PSL) before merging into the Professional Soccer Federation of Western Australia (PSF) before the 1993 season.

The clubs currently playing in the league were formed by cultural associations of Australians who had recently migrated, with certain teams having particular nationalities in common, such as Swan Italian Club (now Swan United), Bayswater Inter (now Bayswater City) and Perth Italia (now Perth SC) with Italian Australians, Floreat Athena with Greek Australians, Morley Windmills with Dutch Australians, Inglewood Kiev (now Inglewood United) with Ukrainian Australians, Benfica United (now Fremantle Spirit) with Portuguese Australians, North Perth Croatia (now Western Knights) and Spearwood Dalmatinac (now part of Cockburn City) with Croatian Australians, Shamrock Rovers with Irish Australians and Stirling Macedonia with Macedonian Australians.

In 1994, the sport's governing body forced clubs to remove references to ethnicities from their names, which resulted in several name changes. After 2019, when the National Club Identity Policy was revoked, some clubs reverted back to their former names.

In recent years, new clubs have begun to be based geographically, such as Armadale SC and Cockburn City. For the 2011–2013 seasons, the West Australian National Training Centre had a team. In most cases, they were used to develop upcoming youth players, not to play for competition points.

Format

The National Premier Leagues were introduced by the Football Federation of Australia in 2013. In 2014, Football West reorganized the former State Premier League into the National Premier Leagues Western Australia conference and the State League (Division One and Division Two).

In addition to a Senior first team, the NPL WA also fields youth teams from U12 to U20. Perth Glory FC Youth compete in the Senior category and has additional age restrictions.

After the 2015 season, promotion and relegation between the NPL and State League Division 1 became possible for the first time, provided the State Division 1 winner met Football West's promotion criteria.

Two teams were promoted after the 2016 season to make the league 14 teams. As a result of a further competition review, the 2019 NPLWA season will feature twelve teams. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, promotion and relegation were suspended for the 2020 season.