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Wikipedia - Victoria Premier League 2
The Victoria Premier League 2 (formerly National Premier Leagues Victoria 3, 2020-2024), commonly referred to as VPL 2, is a semi-professional soccer league in Victoria, Australia. The league is the third-highest in the Victorian league system, behind NPL Victoria and Victoria Premier League 1, and forms part of the fourth tier of the overall Australian pyramid.
The league was created from the bottom halves of NPL Victoria 2 East and West, when the league was reorganised from two geographic conferences to two separate vertical NPL divisions.
The competition is administered by Football Victoria, the governing body of the sport in the state. Due to start 2020 season NPL Victoria 3 has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beginning in the 2024 season, the third-tier competition has been renamed the Victoria Premier Leagues 2, the name of the state-tier competition prior to the formation of NPL Victoria.
History
In 2018, pressures from member clubs and a desire to re-evaluate league structure and organisation lead Football Victoria to commission a report into how the NPL Victoria leagues could be re-worked. Among a series of recommendations on improvements to the youth structure, the report recommended that NPL Victoria 2 - then a two-conference division with ten teams each in an east-west split, contesting 28 fixtures each per season - should be reformed with NPL Victoria 2 turned into a single division of 12 teams and a new 12-team division - NPL Victoria 3 - created.
The proposed changes were agreed, and to enact the split the top six teams of each NPL Victoria 2 conference in the 2019 season were given places in the 2020 Victoria 2 competition, with the bottom four of the two conferences all relegated to Victoria 3. Four additional teams were promoted from Victorian State League 1 to make up the numbers. Among the sides moved to NPL Victoria 3 were the NPL development sides of A-League duo Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory.