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A big feature of this AFL season to date has been the rise up the ladder of GWS Giants. The competition’s newest team have emerged as a genuine force.
And as the Giants rise, attention has been focussed on the Giants Academy, an increasing source of elite talent from NSW and ACT.
The Giants’ recruiting in last year’s draft came exclusively from their Academy, as they added Jacob Hopper, Matthew Kennedy, Harrison Himmelberg and Matthew Flynn to their list.
They join Jack Steele and Jeremy Finlayson as having come through the Giants Academy onto their list.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire is one of a chorus of voices calling for a scaling back of the Academy system, suggesting there are five players in the Giants’ Academy who could potentially go in the top 25 in the draft, and this is handing the Giants an advantage.
Mr McGuire, would you like some cheese with your whine?
The whole point of the Academy, and the selections that go with it, is to develop players from non-traditional footy states. And in a short time it’s been remarkably successful.
In the National Draft of 2012, a draft recent enough that the Giants took part in it, not one player from NSW/ACT was selected. Not by the Giants. Not by Collingwood. Not by any other club. Not one.
So the question therefore needs to be asked. Why were there no players from NSW/ACT worthy of being drafted at all in 2012, but there were four in the top 16 in 2015?
What’s the difference?
It’s not hard to know. It’s the Academies, which were set up and run with the resources of the clubs in those areas. A local development program with a pathway to the local AFL team. Sure there’s talented players, but were there not talented players in 2012?
The old scholarship model in place for NSW players produced more rookies than genuine stars. Taylor Walker is the only player from that system who would have gone in the top 30 of any draft. Even with the best intentions, the tyranny of distance prevented any significant levels of development.
Do the Academies attract talented sportspeople who otherwise would have chosen another sport? We don’t know.
Do they develop the talent they have better than the systems that were in place in 2012 and earlier? Unquestionably so. And should the club that invests their resources in this development not retain those players?
The Giants’ recruiting at last year’s National Draft came exclusively from NSW/ACT – something completely unprecedented.
And with a few other Academy players being rookie-listed by other clubs, the Giants’ existence in the last year has, instead of thinning the talent pool, been a net contributor to it.
So rather than having a whinge that the Giants’ Academy may have five of the top 25 picks, marvel that the states of NSW/ACT, football backwaters not long ago, are now producing elite AFL talent in numbers that would have been unthinkable had the Giants not come into being.
If you’re serious about expanding the reach of the game into NSW/ACT and growing the number of people playing the game at an elite level, this is something to be applauded. It’s working.
Or would people prefer a system that window-dresses an appearance of developing players in non-traditional areas but doesn’t actually succeed?
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