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.
Gerry
Guest
Someone mentioned a conference system that may seem as a possible solution. My suggestion you would have Melb City/Vic/AU/PG and the various Institute / Development Squads from Vic/Tassie/SA/WA/NT and create 8 team southern conference Northern Conference - CC/NEW/SFC/WSW/BR/ plus development teams / Institute teams from each state/territory. I am not sure if this will reduce costs that much
melbourneterrace
Guest
Clubs like South Melbourne have far more resources than the small HAL Clubs, the big ones would easily be able to cope with the demands.
Barca4life
Guest
Guys if we are serious about trying to improve youth development in this country cutting costs from the NYL structure won't work. Youth Development is a investment not a cut cost exercise. Does any of these owners think what the players will do in the summer to keep fit? No wonder we are so behind from the rest of the footballing world!
Waz
Guest
How are they going to fund $250k + + in flight costs when HAL clubs can't?
Waz
Guest
Me too. For football to grow we only need to engague our playing base which is massive, and that engagement must be male and female which would be helped by two top class A and W leagues.
Melbourne terrace
Guest
If Brisbane and Perth want to pull out then let them, their loss. The NPL might be senior football but it's nowhere near long enough. We need our players to be playing at least 35 games in a season. I'm sure clubs like Northern Fury, Sydney United and South Melbourne would love the chance to test their youth on the national stage instead.
Pat
Guest
Timing people. A League is on over the summer, NPL has pretty much just started give or take 2 weeks. Therefore your senior players on a list of 23 have nowhere to keep their match fitness up if you scratch the Youth League.
aladdin sane
Guest
Agree. People talk about football's impressive numbers with women, but the fact of the matter is that women don't consume women's sport (ANZ Championship avg is like 35-45k I think). It's a sad reality, but FFA should be more focussed on getting more female eyes on the HAL (which is still low compared with established codes/sports - fairly sure a recent Roy Morgan study gave figures of 19%, which was well behind cricket, tennis etc). This is very sad for women in the game here, but I really don't think this is where the 'strength' of our game lies and the FFA would be insane to throw precious resources at the women's game.
Kaks
Roar Guru
Paul, Having the womens game tied within the deal is not a draw card, the numbers were low which is why ABC decided to discontinue showing the games and i cant see Fox wanting to show the W-League when they can get higher ratings on other sports during a saturday or sunday afternoon. However for the benefit of the womens game, something needs to happen.
Justin Mahon
Guest
Its almost as if we need some plan that looks at the 'whole of football' and not the parts in isolation :-) #WatchThisSpace
Justin Mahon
Guest
Agree entirely with that.
Justin Mahon
Guest
Something is about to be announced on that front apparently.
Paul
Guest
Northern Fury in Townsville have ambitions to enter sides into the NYL. Perhaps this could mean the creation of a conference system, especially if other NPL sides have similar ambitions (particularly those in regional areas for which there may be more players than clubs available).
Paul
Guest
Would it be worth tying the WWL into the next HAL/Socceroos deal?
Kaks
Roar Guru
Ian, no TV deal for the womens comp. Makes it extremely hard to run the comp with a lack of financial resources
Kaks
Roar Guru
Do A-league clubs have partnership/development deals with NPL clubs? If they dont then the A-league clubs could take a leaf out of NRL's book and have clubs like the Wanderers implement development deals with teams like Sydney United, Bonyrigg, Blacktown city etc where they work alongside teams in their 'home' area and help develop players. In turn, the A-league teams would have the first option in signing players from these clubs who they helped develop and would also have been able to look closely at these players and see if they deem them to be fit for the A-league. Teams like Sydney FC could work closely with Marconi and Sydney Olympic. Victory could work with Bentleigh Greens and so on and so forth. Would also help the NPL and potentially raise the grassroots program of the game in Australia
Paul
Guest
Victory and City have also entered youth sides in the NPLV1 (one division below the top).
Ian
Guest
what's wrong with a women's comp? the national team goes alright actually.
Peter Cotton
Guest
The present NYL set-up is an enormous expense for the HAL clubs (excluding Wellington Phoenix), and a poor business model that is proving to be unviable from a financial point of view. Brisbane Roar already field a Youth team in the Qld NPL, so they would need to find a place for their NYL team. They could consider rebranding their existing NPL team, and then field their NYL team as their Youth Team. How they would go about selecting two teams would be very interesting, as they would not be able to interchange players between the two teams. We then come to the dual registration situation for players moving in and out of the A League team, and the vagaries involved therein. As with most other challenges, solutions can be found. Such an approach would save all A League clubs a considerable amount of money, and at the same time enable them to benefit from being able to centralise some of their operations.
Unitedsince1971
Guest
Great comment. Something needs to change to get owners 100 percent on board with under 21 player Developement. A big gap between under 16 state competition and Youth league. Plus much more focus on female/women players from 9 to 21. More female player focus