Your club has just announced that on top of the JDL registration you have already paid, every U11 family is being charged for two extra technical sessions per week run by an outside provider. Mandatory or your kid "will fall behind." The fee is 40 dollars a week per child, paid directly to the provider. You read it on your phone in the car, your stomach drops, and you start calculating what that adds to the year. Section 3 of the Football NSW JDL Parent Information Guide March 2025 names three rules that mean the club cannot do this. One of them carries a sanction. Here is the rule and the email that uses it.
Three rules that say no, in plain text
Section 3 of the Parent Information Guide is the operative rule. Three bullets, written by Football NSW, governing exactly this scenario:
One. Clubs must not engage private providers to coach within the program or outsource their JDL program.
Two. Clubs must not make additional training opportunities mandatory for their JDL participants.
Three. All coaching, training, and game-related costs associated with the implementation of a talented player development program must be included within the capped Player Registration Fee.
These three rules are not buried in an appendix. They sit in section 3, on page 3 of the Guide, under the heading "JDL Club Standards and Benchmarking Framework Compliance". They apply to every JDL club in NSW. A club that engages an outside provider to deliver coaching inside the JDL program, or makes any extra session mandatory, or charges separately for football coaching, is in breach of all three.
Section 3 also names the contact for matters of this kind. Football NSW publishes the address neilm@footballnsw.com.au for compliance questions in the final paragraph of section 3.
What "mandatory" means in Football NSW's language
The Parent Information Guide draws a hard line on what clubs can charge for and what they cannot make compulsory. Section 21 covers it for clinics and camps, and the principle reads across to all extra activities.
If a club runs a school holiday clinic, it must be advertised to the general public. Not just JDL players. Participation cannot be made compulsory. Selection and game time cannot be adversely affected by non-participation. Zero penalty for a player who does not attend.
An activity involving travel and overnight stays, such as a camp or tournament, can be levied as an additional fee, but only if participation is not mandatory and selection and game time are not affected by non-attendance. The fee must be cost-recovery only, communicated separately, not bundled with registration.
The rule embedded in all of this is plain. A club cannot make any football activity outside the published JDL program mandatory. It can offer extras. It cannot require them. If your club has said "compulsory", "expected", "everyone is doing it", or used selection or game time as the consequence of non-attendance, the rule has been broken before the season started.
A private provider, in the language of section 3, is any individual or business not directly employed by the club to deliver coaching as part of the JDL program. That includes branded technical-coaching businesses, individual coaches running their own ABN, and external academies the club has partnered with. If the parent invoice is being paid to a name other than the club, and the activity sits inside what Football NSW recognises as the JDL program, section 3 applies. Coaching delivered by a club-employed coach outside the JDL program (for example, a separate skills clinic in the off-season, advertised to the public) does not.
What the PRF cap means for "extra" anything
The capped Player Registration Fee for 2026 is 1,998 dollars for Mixed JDL Under 9 to Under 12 and Full Time Girls JDL Under 10 to Under 13, up from 1,736 dollars in 2025. That cap is the entire football cost for the season. Coaching. Training. Games. Kit. Medical at games. Photos. Presentations. All of it.
Section 22 of the Parent Information Guide closes the door on the workarounds. Clubs cannot charge any additional "Club Administration Fee", "Facilities Levy", or "Coaching Levy". Section 3 forbids charging for extra training over and above the recommended number of training nights. Section 10 forbids charging an additional fee for training in the pre-season period (November to March).
The math is uncomfortable for a club that wants extra revenue, which is why the rule is written this directly. If a club wants to offer additional sessions, those sessions must be included within the capped PRF. Not on top. Inside.
For a club running at the cap and wanting to expand the program, the cap is the constraint. For a club running below the cap, there is room to offer more inside the existing cap. For a club running at the cap and then charging extras on top, the rule says no.
How to use the rule if yours is breaking it
A 14-day response window is reasonable for a written request to a club committee. Three steps if your club is charging for compulsory extras.
Step one. Reply to the club's email with a short message citing section 3. Phrasing: "The 2025 JDL Parent Information Guide section 3 states that clubs must not engage private providers to coach within the JDL program, and must not make additional training opportunities mandatory. The fee structure announced appears to fall under this rule. Could the club confirm which Football NSW regulation authorises this charge?" Attach the URL of the Guide. Keep it factual, on the record, and in writing.
Step two. If the response does not produce a Football NSW regulation that authorises the charge, escalate to the member association. The associations under Football NSW handle first-round compliance matters before escalation to the state body. Forward the original announcement, your reply, and the club's response.
Step three. If the matter is unresolved, forward the full thread to Football NSW at neilm@footballnsw.com.au. Reference section 3 and section 22. Note whether the charge was framed as mandatory, optional, or "expected" (the third option still falls under the mandatory rule).
Do not pay the extra charge while the matter is open. Selection and game time cannot be adversely affected by non-participation. That is the rule, and that is the protection that makes the rule usable.
What this rule is actually for
The 2025 JDL launch made the rule explicit because some clubs, in the SAP era, ran de-facto fee creep through "compulsory" extras. Section 3 closed it. The rule is not about banning private coaching. Parents are free to enrol their children with any private provider on their own time, at their own cost, with no involvement from the club. The rule is about what the JDL program itself can require and what it can charge separately. The answer Football NSW has set is: nothing extra, and nothing mandatory.
Most clubs back down at the section 3 email. The ones that do not are running a program outside the published standard, and the audit catches them. Either way, your kid keeps their selection and their game time, which is what the rule was written to protect.
For the broader picture on what JDL is and how the four parent protections fit together, see what JDL actually is in NSW. For the related rule on the fee cap, see the JDL registration fee cap. For the coaching qualifications rule, see minimum JDL coaching qualifications.