Touch over Summer

Our Summer 2023-24 competitions will start in early November and will be based in Princes Park.

Our Junior, SWITCH, and pre season programs and will start before that and lead into the competitions.

Competition details

Princes Park Touch has grown to become the biggest and most successful competition in Victoria.

We run on Wednesday and Thursday nights over summer and cater for the social touch player.

All Wednesdays division are mixed, with Thursdays offering mixed, men’s and women’s competition. Our Wednesdays and Thursday mixed D and E divisions are ideally suited for beginner teams.

Grading is decided on ability, the first two rounds are used to assess team grading and further regrading is done to ensure even competition across our grades.

We have excellent facilities and after running up a sweat, players then socialise over a couple of drinks at the barbecue located next to the fields or in the beer garden at the Great Northern Hotel (our sponsors). Details of the 2023-24 season are:

Location: Princes Park, Carlton

Grades

• Wednesday – Full social mixed competitions: With social A, B, C, D, and E grades.
• Thursday – Full Social mixed (Social C, D, and E ), social men’s grades, and a short format social women’s competitions.

All mixed grades will have restrictions on representative players to ensure they are social in nature.

Touch football is played six aside plus substitutes. Mixed is 3 females and 3 males, on the field.

Format

Matches will consist of 2 X 20 min halves with a 5-minute break. Modified TFA rules will apply.

The competition would normally run for 15 weeks (13-14 games per team) in a Round Robin format with 2 weeks of finals/playoffs for all teams.

Dates

All competitions will have a short break over Christmas and will be finished by late February or early March.

Fees

Costs are now split into two sections: Team fees and Insurance Affiliation. Both are required but they are handled by separate organisations

Team Fees

The total team fee for senior mixed and men’s is $1070 (other specialist competitions have different costs). This covers our (PPT’s) costs in running the weeknight social competition.

This is split into an initial payment of $500 (this is required before the first game), and a residual of $570 that is required before week 3. This is for a 13-15 game season for each team. If cancellations (including lock downs) cause teams to fall below a minimum of 12 games we will refund these fees on a pro rata basis.

Insurance/affiliation

In addition insurance and affiliation are now handle individually by the national body for Touch Football: Touch Football Australia (TFA). TFA now insist that each team has 8 players who are registered with them on their system. The cost per player is $42 for 12 months.

This money does not go to us, but as it covers insurance we would encourage all players to be registered with them. IE is a team has more than 8 players get them all registered and attached to the team in their system.

Click here for a quick primer of how to do this

The Princes Park difference

• Excellent fields: All our fields are in good condition and we have access to them for the entire Summer season.
• Full length games and season: Except for the first two weeks of the season all games are full length (2*20 minutes) and the season is a minimum of 13 games for all teams (this is the longest season in Melbourne). Summer season runs from late October through to late February (with a break around Christmas).
• Social Atmosphere: At PPT we cater for the social touch player. We like to keep it fair and fun.
• Grading: We conduct grading over the first two weeks of the season and regrade throughout the season where appropriate to ensure all team are closely matched.
• No late games: Games are 50 minutes long and start at 6:00, 6:50, and 7:40 (in December and January we start 15 minutes later so 6:15, 7:05, 7:55).
• Heart of Melbourne: PPT is located centrally with great parking and access to public transport.