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Last week, on the World Game website, David Lewis reported that several clubs were considering leaving the National Youth League competition.
Every season, we have seen players brought up from their club’s youth league side to fill gaps in the A-League. Some have gone on to win full-time contracts, while others have found themselves back in the state leagues.
A-League clubs tend to treat the youth league as a player pool when needed and a place to get A-League players back to match fitness. And there is nothing wrong with that.
The problem I have observed is that not enough youth league players go on to win full-time contracts. As a development league, clubs should be picking players for their youth team who are one step away from the A-League.
Perth Glory owner Tony Sage says that his club spends about $450,000 a year on the National Youth League, while Adelaide spends around $220,000 and Brisbane about $300,000 (the difference is mainly due to travel costs). If a club is spending this much money, but only signing one or two players from their youth league side, there is probably a better way to do things.
Part of that solution would seem to be working within the National Premier Leagues competition.
A number of people have remarked to me that the National Youth League competition was an interim competition. They considered that it would be phased out when a second-tier league was developed. That was not my recollection, but I can see the sense of what they are saying.
The National Youth League has probably not met all of its original expectations. The basis of the league was that to develop players in the 16 to 21 age group, they needed to be playing between 35 to 40 games each year. Players in state-based competitions were only playing around 25 to 28 games per season.
Somehow, that idea became linked to A-League clubs and ended up with teams travelling all around the nation. It probably sounded like a great idea in 2007-08. As some A-League clubs are telling us now, it has been tough to maintain.
Of course, there are other ways of achieving the same objective. That appears to be the conversation we now need to have.
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