Is the US combine worth the effort?

I wouldn't be viewed as good publicity by the people who would think: what a weak excuse to have a holiday in the USA.

Zorko, Barlow, Morris, Boyd, Mumford, Curnow, Maxwell from the top of me head. Pretty good strike rate if you ask me, better then a international rookie even if their free.

Its sad to think that Diesal probably wouldnt have got a game in this era. The skinny kid with great skills and footy smarts will nowdays be overlooked for an athlete who they hope will learn the game.

Another anti international footy article. The AFL clubs are already combing the state leagues for talent. The results are there for all to see. The players in those Senior leagues are exposed weekly to the AFL scouts and will be picked up if they are any good. So unsuccessful also have they been that maybe that the draft age will be lifted to let the young guys focus on their y12 studies and come into footy a year later. The AFL National Academy (Was AIS) in Canberra is likely to be doubled in player numbers and so on. These moves are another admission that the AFL youth talent search is not efficient enough, and can be improved. So in the meantine the AFL decides to try and tap the huge Athlete market in the US looking for Dean Cox type players -(Tall and very mobile) Nothing wrong with that.

JasonK, Clearly, the Bad Boys Pistons passed you by.

I would agree with the premise that a professional football players is footballer first, meaning that they would have a highly cultivated strategic sense of football. I grew up in Australia and moved to the states when I was 14. That was in 1991. I just could not pick up American football or basketball, though I'm 6'3" and 200 lbs. You'd think I'd be good at both just because I'm a tad bigger than average and can run fast and jump fairly well. But I'm utterly hopeless. I kick around a Sherrin with some friends over here and it feels like home again. I see clearly how to handle the ball, feel out the distance and velocity of a good kick almost innately. It's from growing up playing football that I've developed the mindset for it. By the time U.S. football came into my life, my brain had developed in such a way that there was no innate sense of the game. It's like learning a language: when you're a little kid, languages come easy, all the brain's wiring is ready to absorb new information. When you're older, it's get harder because more of your brain is hardwired. I honestly think Americans would for the most part be terrified to play in the AFL. 1) The running would kill them; in U.S. football there is tons of standing around talking. It's nearly all standing around talking, time outs and stoppages. 2) AFL players tackle, they don't ram. U.S. players call ramming 'tackling'. They really just ram their padding into another guys padding. 3) The fighting is probably too much for them. Show an American footage from the Line in the Sand match and they go pale. It's not that Americans are peaceful, they just get real uppity when violence directly affects them.

The game is now based so much on endurance and athleticism that skill seems to be a secondary factor. This, at least, would seem to be the justification for searching abroad for athletes with no AFL skill history rather than scouring the local leagues for those who have the skills to play the game but don't have the 'motor' to run from press to press at each end of the ground. Will we soon see more specialisation in AFL? We already seem to have the speedy 'slingshot' tackler type who can run burst from the press at one end, run 200 metres all the way to the goal line at the other, and anyone can kick it from there, no skills needed. When they're not doing that, all this type of player needs to learn is to chase and lay half a dozen tackling attempts inside a 'press' each time and they've done enough to be in the side with practically no kicking or handball skills! Shae McNamara did the bizarre well at Collingwood but he never did the basics well at all. If there really is no better potential AFL players in Australia then we should be more worried about attracting athletes away from inferior local sports like soccer. Put the money spent in the US into junior footy and keep kids away from inferior sports like soccer. On the other hand, maybe I should just go and watch the VAFA?

Er mate ! - I think you missed the whole point of the article - but, you certainly did show us you can go on and on...

The Irish experiment started exactly 30 years ago, so the list of players from outside of Australian Football who managed to play double figure games is pretty small viewed from that context (at least a dozen Irish players trial with clubs every pre-season). The AFL offers around 810 professional contracts, probably as much as all of the other football codes combined, so the scope for having a handful of players on the fringes is certainly there, but it's a bit hit and miss looking over that 30 year history. What we can say for sure is that elite junior athletes can make the transition to Australian Football if they are discovered early enough, the earlier the better, grab the best at around the age of 13 or 14, and they can be almost level pegging with their peers by draft age, or very close to it.

I live in a suburb which has a huge influx of refugees from Africa. They are primarliy Sudanase, Liberian and Ugandan.They play soccer for fun on the school ground next to the local AFL ground. They are tall, strong, incredibly athletic. Physically they are ideal for Australian Rules. I'm not part of the local club, so I don't know what, if any involvement they show in these youths, but watching them as I drive by I see them as wonderful prospects.

Well getting an athletic 7 footer can't be a bad thing after all the Power players once when Sandilands first started playing they deliberately kicked it to his man because he was that much of a liability around the ground and now it is about trying to avoid the guy.

These players almost always lack one of height, pace, ability to work without space or endurance, and some of them lack two. This is why AFL clubs are so 'meh' about taking mature age Margery Medalists. You'll note that the original author talked about "A bountiful harvest of mature-aged recruits" and then only named one. Yeah, I could have named another two - Mohr and Giles - but they play at an expansion club, but that would have clashed with his theme, so he just quoted a player who got cut by his club.

I'll bet neither of Titus nor PhillNZ know who Jonathon Givony is, or why he is important. I'll put it this way - if your sport needs to access the functionally unlimited supply of 6'6 guys who can jump, you need to know him.

I think you could be on to something, what we really need to do is get an American into the Australian Test Cricket team and then BOOM!! 300million new Cricket supporters. We could start by holding trials for people in America who don't quite make it at Baseball.

Put AFL in perspective in the US ,Harry Potters Quidditch has a bigger following and If your looking at stats and facts the AFL said there 40000 who played some AFL in NZ last year, an Aussie mate who plays and lives for AFL pizzed himself with laughter , thats 3 x the amount of players who played Rugby League. Unfortunately it was wrong and the figure they got was total BS but they had to show AFL was in NZ. Or put it another way Rugby Union is one of the fastest growing sport in the US 115,000 members and this is an old figure 2012. Has over 400 plus clubs , played at high schools , universities and i can go on and on BUT very few people know rugby in the US. You have a lot of "Ifs" in your statement the same in Rugby , the reality is when you get to where rugby is , just underneath the lowest rung on the ladder then you will see how big Everest is to climb. Again "if you can get half a dozen yanks good on AFL. http://usarugby.org/ http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/jun/24/american-sports-fans-warming-rugby http://www.centralcaliforniarugbyfoundation.com/why-rugby-.html

For pretty well minimal outlay at present it's an experiment worth pursuing. Jason Holmes at StKilda is a former college basketballer whose brother Andre plays NFL (Oakland Raiders?). Do you reckon they played a bit of everything growing up? Perhaps after seeing Wallace play last yr in the Nth Ballarat ressies was seeing Holmes debut in the Sandringham seniors. Had 4 disp, 1 mark & 4 tckls. He's credited with 3 games so far with 32, 40 & 14 hit outs but missed last wk and might've got hurt in rnd 3?? Of interest 5 FF & 2 FA so he's not clumsy. They obviously see something and the one time I saw him on ABC he looked okay (rnd 1). I don't know much about Patrick Mitchell but he's played all 5 Swans ressies games and nanaged 2 goals. Wallace has played all 4 snrs for Nth Ballarat so far for avg almost 30 HOs and tally of 9 (6 contested) marks, 18 tckl, 3 FF 2 FA, 1 gl & 1 in the best. And avg around 8disposals of varying effectiveness. Coming along nicely but needs to keep improving as all such players in that boat need to coming from a low footy base. Attitude makes up for much.

We have one at the moment, an Irish fella, he went home for a bit and has now returned. My personal personal preference would be that clubs were handed back some of their zones to connect with a community and put development in to youngsters. The clubs in NSW & QLD get this at the moment through their academies, I hope we can follow suit.

sure I hope your club does ignore international rookies too. Spend all the time you want looking at local talent, thats a good idea, but remember one thing ... you still can't pick up any additional picks, they still have to enter the draft and make it to your teams selection, they still count toward the salary cap. International rookies don't affect any of that, your team can sign 8 of them per year up to a maximum of 24 at any on time and none of it counts towards the salary cap. None of them take draft picks. None of them require you to get luck to be able to select them, you just have to train and sign them first. This isn't about doing one thing and not the other, a team can do both. Signing an international rookie does not take a roster spot away from any local talent.

But they haven't managed to find a single player have they? Mike Pyke, for example was recommended to the Swans via a mate and a DVD or something. What is the cost of sending a bunch of coaches to LA, plus some folk from the AFL media department, plus medicos, advertising the thing, organising the training facilities, paying for board, transport etc. etc etc. It's not to say a player won't be found in the future but again, I don't think the cost / benefit stacks up, particularly when you factor there has been approximately 0 benefit. I'd rather my club didn't send recruiters over there, didn't heat train in Dubai, and put more effort in to developing the Western Peninsular and Northern Territory but then I guess those youngsters would be at the behest of the draft and clubs will only do what directly benefits them?

What cost? The coast of running the camp in the US in minimal compared to if you find even a single player every 10th year.