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The AFL needs fewer academies, not more

Expert
3rd February, 2016
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Isaac Heeney is one of many young guns impressing for the Sydney Swans. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Expert
3rd February, 2016
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1372 Reads

There’s a great acronym that I’m sure many of you have heard of before. KISS, or Keep It Simple, Stupid is a good principle for life – the simpler something is, the more likely it is to work the way you want it to.

Unfortunately, the AFL’s decision to give create development academies for all ten Victorian clubs – with more to come in South and Western Australia – has failed to heed this basic piece of wisdom.

Over the past few years the AFL has come under fire for granting certain draft concessions to northern states clubs so long as they develop local players with their own coin via development academies.

The AFL’s goal in this is simple – the more northern states kids it can recruit away from other sports, the better, and offering them an supportive pathway into the AFL at teams that play in their state is a great way to do it.

The clubs have a great incentive to run these academies as well because they can pick up prodigiously talented youngsters for well below their actual draft value – most famously in 2014 when Sydney secured Isaac Heeney at pick 18 despite Melbourne being willing to offer up pick 2 in a bid.

Heeney’s excellent performances in his first year in the AFL only added fuel to the fire for those at clubs in the traditional AFL states outraged that the northern states clubs were getting such a significant advantage.

The AFL has brought in a couple of measures to off-set this, introducing a new and supposedly fairer bidding system for academy (and father-son) players ahead of last year’s draft.

And now they’ve given all the Victorian clubs academies of their own – although they’ll be limited to multicultural and indigenous players – which they’re no doubt hoping will content them for the time being.

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The situation reminds me of a game of Jenga. You take the blocks out of the tower, making it more unstable, and then you put them on top, which makes a collapse ever more likely.

Here the AFL has taken the draft, already made a bit unstable by the inclusion of northern states academies, and heaped a pile more blocks on top of it. In Jenga, the tower is meant to collapse eventually – but that’s not what we want in the AFL draft.

Clubs might be happy for now as they look to develop their own prospects, but it’s only natural that some territories will outperform others over time, and then the debate will come. Why should the territories by split up the way they are? Who really qualifies as a multicultural player?

The fact that ten AFL clubs are splitting up Victoria while Fremantle and West Coast will each have access to half of Western Australia makes it immediately clear that the system is never going to be tenable in the long term.

The simple answer? Get rid of club-operated development academies. The problem is not that we didn’t have enough, it’s that we shouldn’t have had them to start with.

The AFL draft is meant to be an equaliser – messing around with the rules of how recruitment works goes against that fundamental nature. Messing around with them even more, surprisingly, is not going to fix that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m strongly in support of programs that seek to increase multicultural and indigenous participation in the game. I’ve written about it before. Not only are they a great way to enhance the talent base of the league, they’re also great for breaking down social barriers between people who might not normally interact.

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In setting up these academies the AFL is essentially privatising that initiative, putting it in the hands of talented people who have a lot to gain from it being successful – AFL clubs.

That might sound like a good thing at first – the incentive AFL clubs have from running academies could drive them to be a lot more successful than if the AFL was to manage them.

But, the goals of clubs and the goals of the AFL are not aligned here. The AFL is looking to grow the game, but clubs are going to be focusing on creating talented prospects for their own list. Clubs are going to find the most efficient way to do what’s best for themselves and ignore everything else – that’s their job.

For that reason, and to protect the integrity of the draft, the AFL needs to run these development academies itself.

Run them specifically with the focus of bringing our game to people who might not otherwise encounter it, bringing them together, giving them opportunities to go further with it, if they’re good enough.

But don’t put it in the hands of clubs. Don’t further compromise the draft. That path only leads to more headaches for the AFL and its fans.

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