Paul Taylor - the AFL's community football and competition manager for northern NSW - said the league had outgrown its amateur status in terms of the game's operations.

To illustrate the point, he said that in the past seven years AFL North West had gone from a seven-team men's competition to a league that now also features a women's competition as well as under-17 and under-14 comps.

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He said: "That growth in that space of time has been phenomenal, and to think it's all been achieved by a group of volunteers.

"But it's probably got to the point where the volunteers have taken it as far as they can take it; the volunteers are now really stretched.

"And the volunteers wanted to make sure that the standards and the services, and so on, to footy clubs - to footy players - didn't go backwards."

AFL North West's eight clubs recently voted unanimously to relinquish control of the league after running it for 24 years.

Taylor, who has had a lengthy association with AFL North West, will work with an incoming new appointee to oversee the sport in the region as well as on the North Coast.

He said they would share responsibilities based on their expertise.

The AFL manages a host of leagues in NSW and the ACT including AFL Sydney, AFL South Coast, AFL Sapphire Coast, AFL Canberra and AFL Central West.

"So, you can see from that geographical spread that the vast majority of leagues across the state and territory these days are now operating under a managed-league model," Taylor said.

The best way to ensure AFL North West's "remarkable" growth continued, he said, was "to professionalise the competition structure and the competition management systems" by having "a couple of staff dedicated" to the league.

AFL North West, he continued, would also benefit from "the linkages that we have through the greater business, back into our marketing teams, back into our game-development teams, back into our talent teams and the pathways.

"So it just opens up so many opportunities for the game and for the members."

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