Victorian clubs given academies, funding to recruit young talent

the game doesn't need to develop players. all it needs is a handful of individual who can run at the age of 18 or so. enlist them and call them world champions. no one will know the difference. after all who can you compare it to.

My sons are handy, but my ancestors came out in the potato famine, but my wife is a Vietnamese refugee, does my son qualify? If it was the other way and he had the Asian last name would he count then? All a bit messy if you ask me.

Surely this is the key line in the article. Quote" These academies will allow Victorian clubs to invest in the development of underage players from multicultural or indigenous backgrounds. Lets do some profiling. Most young players will come from a White Anglo background. So how many of the Non white kids are there. This is where Soccer Football is killing it in that area. Can understand what the AFL Is doing to concentrate on that area of our society.

I see the AFL looking after Hawthorn with their zone. Some prime footy heartlands. What do you expect from Mark Evans. The HFL will crash and burn the way its going.

That's a shame about Petrevski-Seton. If SA and WA were carved into equal recruiting zones for WCE, Freo, Port, and the Crows I think it could be a decent advantage for those teams in the long run. Not sure what the breakdown of total afl player numbers is by state of origin, but given WA and SA have 2 afl teams to Victoria's 10 I reckon they are bound to increase their chances of obtaining top-class young players cheaply relative to the Vic teams.

And Jack Martin...

And probably be too late for Sam Petrevski-Seton in this years draft too

Considering the NT is 33% indigenous and Freo and Port have had the most indigenous players on their lists in the AFL and on the field at one time (both with 7 in an AFL match) it beggars belief that the AFL has tied the NT to Victoria. Historically the SANFL and WAFL are where the NT players first headed, Maurice Rioli, David Kantilla, Gilbert and Adrian McAdam, Michael Long, Scott Chisholm, Gary Dhurrkay, Peter Burgoyne, Ronnie Burns etc etc etc This link is now being broken by having the state divided up by the AFL for Victorian clubs. Good to see they are putting the V back into the AFL.

The same way they do it elsewhere, with set criteria accessed via simple questions (e.g. Do you have a parent born overseas? Are you Aboriginal or TSI?) .

Love the idea of Freo and WC having first dibs on players from the North West. Hopefully we get the South West as well. Just a bit too late for Jaeger O'Meara.

So AFL funds academies for Victorian clubs, where those teams can get first rights to blokes who have AFL flowing in their veins. There'd be 100 viable options. But the Swans, Suns, and Lions pay for their own, and have to slog it out in Rugby heartland. Where there might be one tenth of the number of quality footballers. Nice one AFL, you cocked it up again.

For a start, the Crows have a wonderful history of Cannons players coming to the Club.

Stick with the soccer fuul,

How will AFL identify a kid as "indigenous" & "Multi-cultural"? Is it based on self-selection? Perhaps, the Andrew Bolt "skin colour test"? Or, the surname must end in a hard vowel? Sounds like a typical AFL announcement - all spin, no substance.

I don't find it amazing, i think in general it is the circle of life, what is old is new again etc, besides the AFL who has abandoned reserves and colts, state leagues still have zones, although they may change from year to year according to population shifts and suburban growth. Women's footy next year may be a good start for a curtain raiser, West Perth last year even had Colts, ressies and then league followed by a game of Gaelic football on Multicultural day, now that's a big day at the footy, Guinness had sold out before the 1st's played.

First, the AFL gives academies to the Northern clubs. Without thinking through what their goals are and how best to meet them. For example, is the best way to find and develop the talent through academies tied to clubs? Then they discover that the other clubs kick up a fuss about it being unequal - surprise, surprise. Then, still not thinking primarily about the goals, which are enumerated in this post and the comments it has received, it decides to carve up ultimately everything between the clubs - which will inevitably lead to further inequities that can have very deleterious effects on the League. Then they will have to tinker some more. I'm not against a step by step journey - after all that's really the way of life - but sometimes you have have to lift your eyes and see the likely state of play ahead of you. Too much politics and not enough good policy. Isn't there a better way to find and develop players? Must be, but then the Northern club-based academies would have to be dismantled, neh?

The thing I find amazing about tis is that back before the 1990's clubs had zones, reserves and U19's and all 3 played at the same ground on the same day - the AFL in their wisdom abandoned all of that but now all these years later we have more and more teams going with stand alone VFL teams, the sporadic re-emergence of the curtain raiser and now they have a modified zone system - all we need next is U19's to be brought back and the circle will be complete.

If a kid is a good footballer, whether the club is rich or poor it is pretty obvious.

At the end of the day more resources poured into NT footy is not a bad thing, self interest is sometimes a good thing, footy can be a way out of poverty and living in isolated communities, at worst some more kids may get a chance and if football does not work out go on to something else. Perhaps the thinking is that the WA and SA clubs would be at a stretch resourcing NT when there own states are so huge.

Because at the moment, junior development is left to the poorest clubs in Australia. The idea would be to have the richest clubs (i.e AFL clubs) developing the talent.