Swans' Mills takes out Rising Star award

Complete opposite, the effort is so impressive it highlights the ludicrous situation where the best kid in the land gets gifted to one club. Didn’t the AFL kill some other young superstar you were getting next year out of sheer embarrassment and the outcry it would ignite?

How's that relevant to Sydney getting a top 3 draft pick? Who has the last decent player to leave Sydney because he wanted to "go home"? Sydney have no issues attracting free agents, be they from Sydney, Perth, Gold Coast.... 21 players on the Cats list are from outside Victoria, that's almost half!! I understand that the Swans have a higher percentage, but it's still a significant portion of the list, and not many players are leaving either side looking to go home. Culture is much more important at a football club, and the Cats, as do the Swans, have a culture that attracts and keeps players from interstate. So please, tell me again why it's fair that a top 4 side should have access to a number 3 draft pick? My point still stands,

Well done Mills a deserved and obvious winner. Looks like this great effort is being dismissed unfortunately and little respect being shown. The way the Victorians put on the water works every time they are shown up as not being the best is remarkable.

They were handed to them, jesus even that Barry Hall decision at the tribunal was a laughing stock and basically brought the game into disrepute.

Three fifths of stuff all has both of you two twats beat! … besides, the real conquests were made in Roppongi at night with some of the most gorgeous women on the planet… I even met Prince at a nightclub that had beach sand and palm trees for a dance floor… he sat there all night surrounded by body guards looking down his nose at everyone like a midget tool… Peter always preferred to nick over to Korea for the weekend and roll back Monday morning looking like death and telling me I didn’t know what I was missing, Korean girls were crazy good looking and hot for foreigners… It’s safe to say football wasn’t high on my list of priorities but he needed a coach and I had played under 19’s for Collingwood under Keith Burns so I got the gig and we started the league. So stfu and respect my authoritah!

Yeah you said that already and it's just as wrong the 2nd time around.

I reckon there are 34 year Sydney Swans members, plus those from South Melbourne who still follow their bloods, that respect those rubbish flags they were supposedly handed. Let me see, 2 flags in 83 years.....still less than Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn, Carlton, Geelong, North Melbourne, West Coast, Brisbane, the latter in less time. But yeah, kudos to the AFL and the successful leg up they have handed this club that has done so amazingly well from their assistance. Fair dinkum. What cloud are you on?

Counts for three fifths of stuff all. You still haven't answered the blokes question and your integrity is lowering by every second deflective post.

You mean the people that are sick to death of flags being gifted to rugby state clubs? Ask Brisbane if fake flags lead to sustained success, then go get a clue!

Dreaming Michael, next you'll be telling me Melbourne weather is an unfair advantage.

I am the co founder (along with Peter Wilson of the Age) of the Japan Australian football league (JAFL) that started with a bunch of us Aussies playing Keio University and Waseda University back in the late 80's in Tokyo... does that count?

No I was talking to him... have you got the Abbott and Costello reference yet cat? It's only the most famous comedy routine in history.

i think that sounds like a good idea if it makes people like you shut up

what region / state do those clubs currently get the majority of their players from?

i could fill a book or two myself but that doesn't necessarily make it relevant. I ask my questions again - will you answer them this time mate instead of trying to deflect: are you speaking from experience? do you have experience running a professional football club?

Yes the development is fantastic for the game but all clubs should have access... or do we restrict Syd and GWS from recruiting the Victorian players? Because it's our infrastructure you take advantage of when you do recruit a Vic... fairs fair, that's all we ask.

What the Victorian Academy-haters want is a system that pays lip service to developing the game in the northern states but doesn't actually do anything. The problem with the Academy system is that it's working. As recently as 2012, there was not one NSW player selected in the entire draft. Not by the Swans, not by the Giants, not by anyone else. Not one. Now we see Callum Mills taken at pick 3, four NSW players in the top 16, GWS foing all their drafting from the Academy. Is the Academy system attracting players from the northern states who otherwise wouldn't have played the game at all? Probably. Is the Academy system developing players more effectively than those players would otherwise have been developed? Unquestionably so. These are additions to the talent pool, not draining or depleting it. Would Callum Mills have been a number 3 pick if he hadn't been through the Academy? Not a chance! Probably he'd have fallen through the cracks, like every single NSW player did in 2012. At best he'd have been rookie-listed. He is only a number 3 because the Swans made him a number 3. And of course, having put their resources into him, they should get first dibs on him. Had the Swans not developed him in their Academy, no-one else would have drafted him anyway. He is an addition to the talent pool; hardly compromising it.

I the sample mentioned, you beat the Lions. Hmmm......."best wins..blah blah".......really? Excuses? None given, none needed. The fixture is a much bigger advantage every year to Vic clubs than anything you can find for non Vic clubs.

50% of Australia's population live in Queensland and NSW. 4 teams out of 18 is 22% while less than 5% AFL players come from Queensland and NSW. That gives the Victorian, SA and WA teams a huge advantage in recruiting and retaining players. Go home is mostly one way and that is not to Sydney and Queensland. 5 players leaving the Lions! Chad Wingard saying I'll be going home after 2 years etc The Academies are about addressing the huge disadvantage Queensland and NSW teams have. They are not producing an advantage, they are addressing a disadvantage.

Well don't 'fell' too much mate, you might hurt yourself.