THE NPL Tasmania will feature promotion and relegation and be expanded to 10 teams from 2019, Football Federation Tasmania says.

The governing body yesterday announced the changes, which will be the most signif­icant restructure of senior football in Tasmania since the return of the statewide league in 2013.

FFT President Sean Collins has always wanted to see promotion and relegation in Tasmania and said the timing was right after a period of ensuring that the statewide league was sustainable.

“The reason we’ve done [this] now is we think that the state of the game and the state of the competition is strong enough,” he said.

“Promotion and relegation is really the lifeblood of football throughout most of the world. It’s something that sets our code apart, and there’s a lot of excitement to it.”

Southern and Northern Championship winners will not automatically qualify. There will be a set of mandatory criteria – relating to aspects such as finance, structure, and coaching qualifications – that clubs will need to meet in order to be promoted.

One club celebrating the announcement is the Glenorchy Knights.

The Knights were relegated last year when their NPL licence­ wasn’t renewed after an awful season, in which they lost their last 17 games.

They bounced back this season to take the Southern Championship in a canter, and yesterday’s announcement means they could earn their place back in the top flight without having to go through the application process.

Glenorchy president Tony Bacic said it was a “big move forward for football in Tasmania”, and was confident the Knights would meet the requirements should they win the league in 2018.

“The application process, to be quite frank, it was flawed, and we’ve been lobbying and discussing [ways] to be able to put a system in place which is being used right around the world,” he said. “It allows not only us, but every club in Tasmania, to be able to set goals.”