Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Macclesfield Football Club

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Feel free to move the page to a new title if desired. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 22:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Macclesfield Football Club[edit]

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Macclesfield Football Club (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Football club in the village of Macclesfield, South Australia (Population ~ 700) in the Adelaide Hills. Plays in a local league against other villages in the Adelaide Hills. No notable achievements. Sources are to self-published books by Peter Lines Given that around 12% of people in Australia are males aged 12-35, they have around 80 prime-aged people to choose from, so less people available than an average high school ~ 1000 students. So not notable since we don't have articles for high school sports teams. Bumbubookworm (talk) 00:42, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is a football club that has existed over 100 years and is far from just a village team. It has a team that plays A-Grade football and the club draws players from much further than just the township of Macclesfield. Notability should not be based on the size of the host town (Collingwood for example is only a small suburb of Melbourne). There are citations in the article from the Adelaide Advertiser and regional newspapers, and the only fault may be that it is a stub and that it needs further references. It is notable based on nearly all senior clubs in the country being considered notable, receives regular media content (including scores). If this is deemed to fail notability, there are 1000s of similar articles. The High School reference is not relevant in this case as football is not the primary business of a school, it is not a senior team, and most high schools have an article.Screech1616 (talk) 10:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It plays in a local amateur league covering only a small geographical district within a state, and far below the state league. I don't see any established practice in other sport where all "senior clubs" are deemed notable. Simply entering an amateur team in a some amateur competition doesn't make it notable just because it is a bunch of random adults playing on the weekend. I checked some other sports categories in Australia and it was only AFL that there is widespread creations of just local suburban teams. In the other sports, apart from teams in the state league, there are basically no articles. Bumbubookworm (talk) 22:09, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is not an Amateur club/league, it plays under a salary cap. This is where Australian Football differs from other organised sport in Australia, almost all senior (first-team) football in the big traditional states (Victoria, SA & WA) is semi-professional. It could be argued that this club (along with a number of other articles you have nominated) is more notable than a number of Soccer teams around the world (e.g. Amersham Town or Langford F.C. that play in the 10th tier of the English Pyramid. Macclesfield is a semi-professional club that plays in the Hills FL Division 2 competition, only 3 steps away from the AFL (HFL D2 -> HFL D1 -> SANFL -> AFL). Screech1616 (talk) 09:52, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just because paying people is allowed, doesn't mean that it is of a reasonable, let alone high/meritable standard and we would need to know the median salary as many/most would not be paid and competitive football would not be a main part of the players' lives/goals. People in Australia will be aware that many die-hard AFL supporters claim that all the best athletes in Australia play AFL and if they decided to play other sports then Australia would win suddenly win the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics etc etc. It's quite normal to see plenty of these suburban/village teams be staffed by old/obese fellows (keep clicking for many examples). If it was close to 'first-class standard' then there is no way that obese or old guys who are 35+ would be able to compete with people in their early 20s in a sport that has a heavy emphasis on sprinting/jumping/collisions. I also checked that in the leagues in the navigation templates on WP, there would be about 300 clubs in South Australia, a state of 1.5 million. There is no way there would be enough depth that any club in an organised competition will be "senior level". I don't think people would accept the equivalent of 300*40 = the 12,000th ranked soccer team in a large European country of 60m people being put on WP either Bumbubookworm (talk) 12:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There is sustained long term coverage of the subject. I have not checked these but there are potentially over 6,000 references available here. The significant majority of these will be routine and-or minor and some not relevant, but even if only 1% are good references, there will be more than sufficient to support GNG. Looks like insufficient BEFORE was done. Aoziwe (talk) 10:41, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:25, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • At least redirect to Hills Football League as an alternative to deletion. Open to a full keep if better sources are found. Frankly, when the nominator is using population sizes, salaries and even players' obesity as measures of notability I am skeptical this AfD has been properly thought through. The available sources should define whether this club is notable. – Teratix ₵ 11:55, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Continuing discussion above: Notability is not a measured on population size, or your opinion of the standard of competition. Australian Football has a very flat structure where there are really only three tiers of senior football, AFL, State League (SANFL, WAFL, etc) and Country/Community level. Nobody is arguing anything below that has notability, but the third tier is genuinely Senior football. The pictures you are referring to look to me that they are likely B-Grade (Reserves) level games, which is only a supporting component of the overall club. Agree that better references can be added, but they are clearly available for someone to put in the effort. In its current form it is clearly a stub-class article at the moment, but that is not a reason to delete.Screech1616 (talk) 13:32, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Keep...redirect....delete? Thoughts?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 19:45, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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