This week the worst kept secret in drafting circles was revealed: Nick Blakey will forego father-son connections, and nominate the Sydney Swans as his club of choice at the 2018 AFL National Draft.
It is a decision that has frustrated and disappointed fans, officials, and coaches of both North Melbourne and Brisbane – where his father, John, played 135 games, and 224 games and won two premierships, respectively.
Nick – a 190-plus centimetre forward certain to be selected in the top ten of this year’s draft – is not to blame, but a simple decision made by a teenager has stoked the fire underneath a widely known, yet under-discussed flaw in the protocols of the game.
The buzzword of the modern era has been ‘equalisation’. It is a core concept that, no matter the history, wealth, or other off-field resources available to any given club, they all are provided with an opportunity for on-field success.
And yet, an institution that is integral in achieving the AFL’s equalisation agenda, the National Draft, is undermined by the academy system – be it those north of the Barassi Line or the Next-Generation Academies available to all clubs across the country.
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The academies are well-intentioned. The northern academies are designed to tempt New South Wales and Queensland’s most promising junior athletes away from the clutches of soccer, rugby league and rugby union, while the NGAs provide crucial development pathways for multicultural and indigenous kids to pursue their AFL dreams.
But, you know what they say: the road to a compromised draft is paved with good intentions.
To allow a club unfettered access to the most talented kids simply by virtue of their geographical location is not just giving those clubs a leg up, it’s just downright unfair. It makes a complete mockery of that ‘equalisation’ concept.
In the hands of clubs, they’re retrograde tools that hearken back to a day when a club’s money and pulling power determined where the most talented teenagers would play.
They also offer a real threat to the integrity of the game; a temptation for clubs to offer scholarships, payments and jobs for family members to lure kids into their academy’s jurisdiction.
That’s not to say that the academies should be scrapped, because they shouldn’t. They work. There are AFL footballers right now that most likely wouldn’t be where they are today if it wasn’t for the academies, Isaac Heeney at Sydney the obvious example.
Isaac Heeney (Photo: Michael Willson/AFL Media)
But they need to be taken out of the hands of the clubs. The pathways, the systems, the incentives should all stay as they are, but the end result should be a prospect that is able to be drafted by any club.
Now, some might suggest that this will lead to the collapse of the academies as clubs pull their funding and involvement without the significant incentive of claiming the choice prospects. Perhaps they will, but this should be a cause of celebration, not angst.
The responsibility for funding the academies should fall exclusively on the AFL; not an organisation short on funds. This would be a worthwhile investment in the development of the game across the country that would serve to make the academies truly impartial.
This might push some junior footballers away from the academies, as the prospect of staying in their home city disappears and they face the possibility of moving around the country. This is a challenge that every aspiring AFL footballer faces, and academy members shouldn’t be exempt just because of where they live.
Satisfying junior footballers and their families is not worth the cost to the integrity of the game. Those that may be lost are a necessary sacrifice in the quest for true equalisation.
Paul D
Roar Guru
There is no way on god's green earth a whole bunch of Queensland parents are going to sign their kids up to an AFL run academy in their teenage years if the kids aren't guaranteed to remain local and could be whisked away interstate at age 17 by any club in the business. Your proposals have already been debunked above - see passim, ad nauseum - particularly regarding the Queensland clubs and if you're going to keep commenting you should either admit you concede the Queensland clubs need their academies to have any hope of getting better in future as Maggie proposed, or explain sensibly how you propose to get round the numerous obstacles that have been thrown in the way of your proposal "true equalisation" - pretty sure true socialism is supposed to be utopia too, except it's also an impossibility
Jesse
Roar Rookie
That's the point. The clubs should have no say in development at an underage level, it should be AFL-operated. As I said in the article, they are a good thing. They work. But they should be impartial, free of club influence. True equalisation would mean that no club has priority access to any kid; that all of them are free to be drafted by any club in an open draft.
Justin Mitchell
Roar Guru
Not this argument again. The academy's produce 10 or more players every year they get drafted, become rookies or play in state leagues. There's probably been more than 100 afl-ready players produced by the academies. Every club has access to the players in the draft. The Swans academy's first big product was Heeney. Until then it was Brandon Jack and a lot of state league players that ended up in the neafl, making that league stronger. Same for suns, giants and lions. If you take away club control, you take away incentives. If you remove piority access, clubs constantly at the top would never have access to talent they develop. Academies are needed. Stop being gullible and believing everything Gordon and McGuire spew out.
Maggie
Guest
Thanks Jesse, I think mostly you and I are in agreement on the issues, it is the solution on which we have different opinions. I fear we are very quickly headed for some real inequities with the rushed (and botched?) introduction of the NGAs. I had Tarryn Tindall-Thomas in mind when I wrote my previous comments (you are the first North fan I have heard/read acknowledge the inequity of his potential recruitment). It might have been better writing your article concentrating on the NGAs with a second section discussing the northern academies. As you can see from the tide of comments, most readers hear the word ‘academies’ and think only of the northern institutions. I think the two Queensland academies are almost a separate category. Brisbane and the Suns, with their huge attraction/retention difficulties, desperately need their academies to be successful and to provide them with priority access to high quality home-grown picks. If the AFL wants Queensland to remain a viable Australian Rules locality I think they have to keep academy rules unchanged for them. I’m still somewhat unclear how you envisage an AFL funded and managed academy system to work. You might have read other comments I made in response to Cat where I pointed out the size, complexity and cost of what would be involved. Would you still see any continued role for clubs?
Maggie
Guest
I didn’t expect you to change your mind but: 1. The Swans were expecting COLA to be phased out before they recruited Buddy. 2. Yes the Buddy deal angered the AFL - they wanted him to go to GWS - and so the AFL petuantly punished the Swans with the trade ban. 3. No, COLA was not abused: the AFL put out a statement acknowledging that the Swans had acted at all times within the rules (and eased the trade ban in its second year to allow the Jetta/Sinclair trade to go ahead, in itself an recognition that the inequity of the trade ban had wider implications than just for the Swans.) 4. I truly hope you are not one of those arithmetically challenged people who think that the single COLA cheque could be used repeatedly to pay different players (firsf Tippett, then Franklin, then planned to be used again to recruit Frawley). 5. I’m disappointed that you look forward to 2020/2021 when “Buddy will probably be on one leg or already retired”. He is one of the players of a lifetime: I would have hoped all footy lovers would want to see him for as long as possible. 6. Karma? No, it’s just footy. There is not a single club that would not have wanted to recruit Buddy if he had come knocking on their door. If it eventuates that the risk taken leads to financial difficulty, it will still have been a helluva ride. 7. And now I will take my own advice and give it a rest!
Birdman
Guest
Maggie, thank for the considered response on COLA - while I can't possibly agree that Sydney already expected it to be removed prior to the Buddy deal which angered the AFL so much that it decided to end it because it was finally clear it was being abused. I can only say that I look forward to the big money coming in 2020 and 2021 when Buddy will probably be on one leg or already retired. As I said karma came for the Swans.....
Jesse
Roar Rookie
Thanks for the considered reply, Maggie. I didn't have time earlier to give your comment the proper reply that it deserved. "You have used Nick Blakey as the example to criticise the academies on the grounds they are a retrograde step away from equalisation. Yet you implicitly approve father/son selections by citing North Melbourne and Brisbane‘s frustration and disappointment in Blakey’s decision. If your concern is equalisation, then you should start by criticising father/son selections. They clearly compromise the draft while having no talent pool growth justification." That's a fair comment. Personally, I would have no problem with the F/S protocol being looked at as part of a large-scale review of the academy/FS bidding process and the draft. I suspect I would be in the minority on that issue though. Equalisation should mean that every u/18 prospect would be available to be drafted by any club, no matter where they're from or where their fathers played football. That's another one for the perpetual tradition vs modernity debate. "What is more concerning is the Fairfax media report this week that clubs are asking about the backgrounds of every player on TAC Cup lists, who therefore are already in the pathway program, to determine whether they fill the criteria for priority access through their Next Generation academies (NGAs). The intent of the NGAs was to develop new talent from under-represented population groups, not to sign up promising young players already in established pathway programs." No argument whatsoever from me here. I completely agree. As it stands, the players that the clubs have access to through the NGA weren't the intended targets in my opinion, see: Tarryn Thomas. He's a kid that was touted for the very top since he was 14/15, and for just as long he's been talked about as one of Tassie's best prospects in years. I'm a North fan, and, frankly, I think it's utterly ridiculous and, yes, completely unfair that we have priority access to him simply because the AFL arbitrarily allocated us a zone in Tassie for multicultural and indigenous kids, and he happens to live there and be of indigenous descent. As I touched on in the article, my opinion is that the academies are well-intentioned, but as it stands they are seriously flawed in execution. "Your argument that the AFL should provide all the funding, with the academy development programs remaining unchanged and academy players going into the general draft, sounds easy in principle (although it would be very costly). In practice I can’t see any incentive for clubs to run academies if there is no chance of gaining priority access to some players. And the AFL itself is not going to run academies – it is an administrative organisation not a coaching/development body." The AFL is ostensibly an administrative organisation, but in reality it is the body that controls everything. It allocates funds for grass-roots development across the country and it appoints people, not only administrators but coaches and development officials, as it sees fit. Funding and controlling the academies would not be beyond the AFL's purview. In fact, I think it would be the best body to do it. It would mitigate conflicts of interest, reduce cynicism, and remove temptation for clubs to operate nefariously in their pursuit of the best kids if the academies were AFL-controlled with the knowledge that the athletes produced would be available to any club that wished to draft them. "It is also likely that the appeal of academies to attracf young players (and their parents) would be lessened without both club ties and the potential that, if good enough, players could get drafted in their home state. You touch on the latter and dismiss it, but it is a significant issue in cultural groups for whom family connections are very strong. And these are some of the groups NGAs in particular are intended to reach." I did. It's my belied that the draft/equalisation shouldn't be compromised simply because a few kids don't want to leave their home state. It's not worth it. And if a kid did leave Sydney and wanted to return their due to homesickness, then he would be free to pursue that through trade or FA, just as Patrick Dangerfield, Jake Lever and countless others have done. But we shouldn't be undermining equalisation just to do this before he's even drafted. There are a few sacrifices that all prospective draftees have to make if they want to pursue their AFL career, and this is one of them. It's not something unique to our sport either, in fact, with the absence of non-consensual trading, they're treated much better in this respect than their foreign counterparts. It's part of being a professional athlete; a life that has far more privileges than challenges, it must be said. 'By the way, clubs do not get ‘unfettered access’ to players coming out of academies. They get priority access through the draft points and bidding process. In the unlikely event that one club had several academy players so good that they were bid on in round 1, the club would almost certainly have only the points to take one of the players, with the others going elsewhere. Quite a few players coming out of the northern academies have already been drafted by other clubs.' By 'unfettered,' I mean they have exclusive rights to that player. Perhaps that was poorly phrased on my part. Yes, players have been passed up by the Northern clubs before. In fact, North have been beneficiaries of this when they drafted Corey Wagner, Josh Williams, and Declan Watson, but these tend to be later picks, rather than the choice prospects. As it stands, some clubs have/had exclusive access to the best kids, so first-round draft talents, by virtue of their geographical location, ie. Heeney, Mills, Hipwood, Blakey, Thomas etc, and it looks like there will be plenty more as a result of the NGAs as they become more influential. I don't think this should be the case in an uncompromised draft. These players should be available to any team.
Jesse
Roar Rookie
Please, tell me where I said he should be sent to North.
Paul D
Roar Guru
it makes it common and everyday and acceptable. your moral judgments are your own
TWLS
Guest
So the player wants to remain in Sydney and therefore deals will have to be done to keep him there. He obviously has no desire to be involved in going to the North Melbourne Club, and going by his actions and intent has no emotional connection to the Father Son rule as laid out by the AFL. According to the Author he should be overruled and SENT to North Melbourne as per the AFL rules. Our game is blighted by this Victorian attitude of we created the game so its ours lock stock and barrel. Good on him by deciding to attach to a successful Club in the past decade.
Maggie
Guest
“match the deal of the century without COLA? Really?” Yes, The Swans paid Buddy far less in his first couple of years with them than he had already been getting at Hawthorn. The Swans had to pay less because of their very tight salary cap. The big money comes in 2020 & 2021 (although it will be industry standard for star players by then). Nobody expected COLA to still exist then - or certainly the Swans didn’t (they said as much, even though they thought it was justified they knew the writing was on the wall). It was the last three years of the contract (no COLA involved) that Hawthorn baulked at - a perfectly rational decision. It frightened Swans fans too. I generally don’t bother responding to COLA comments anymore but sometimes for an accurate record it is worth the effort. I know you are happy with what Hawthorn has achieved in the years since (as you should be). So as I said, give the now-gone COLA a rest.
Paul D
Roar Guru
Thanks Tom. We can always agree on academies:) One last though I will add too is that the main reason these academies are so successful is because the clubs can spruik to the parents that their kids will be drafted by a local club, the kid stays local, plays for his home state etc - if the academies were indeed to be funded by the AFL and it's open slather as to anyone who can come and grab them, almost like some sort of Mao's last dancer thing where the AFL travelling carnival crashes through queensland scooping up every talented kid they can find and whisking them interstate to god knows what club or what sort of lifestyle - well, how many parents are going to be signing up their kids for that? And if the kid is seriously talented and he's got the qld bulls knocking, or the broncos calling as well - honestly, only a victorian could write an article claiming that the inherent amazingness of afl football in general will somehow paper over all of this in the eyes of queensland parents and queenslanders in general...well. I think enough has been said now.
Aligee
Guest
Haha yes, but the shacks built are pure pieces of Australian ingenuity. I would go so far as to call it art ?
Maggie
Guest
Cat, the separate AFL arm would be a huge organisation to take over the work of all 18 club academies. The Swans academy alone currently involves 600 male players, aged from 11 to 19 plus a Youth Girls program, with 120 players in U12 and U13 squads. It employs more than 80 coaches and conditioning staff who train players in 10 locations in regional NSW and the Sydney metro area. Try multiplying that by 18 clubs. Even scaling the total down to allow for the fact that the Swans academy is probably the largest and most comprehensive academy, it would still be a very large and very expensive exercise. I can’t see the AFL being either capable or interested. As I said earlier, if there is a problem emerging that clubs are using academies to gain priority access to talented young players who were already playing AFL in pathway programs (and I believe this is likely to be the case in NGAs rather than the northern academies referred to in most of the comments here), then tackle the problem by reviewing and tightening the priority access eligibility criteria.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
Whether you or I agree with it or not is pretty irrelevant. Growing the game into the new areas is the priority. It doesn't mean you can't also provide assistance to "grass roots footy". If the VFL didn't expand it would be withering on the vine right now and unable to compete with bigger leagues moving in and grass roots would be in even more "trouble" than it is now. Grass roots footy is always going to be susceptible to priority and demographic shifts. Strength comes from diversification of your base. They have the money and size to do it now.
I ate pies
Guest
I don't agree that the priority should be to grown the game. The numbers just don't stack up from what's been spent over the last 30 yeas. I think the priority needs to be on looking after the grass roots at the moment. It's struggling big time.
I ate pies
Guest
That doesn't make it right or excusable.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
"Unfair" is just so subjective, driven by narrow views and emotion it just does not allow you to see things clearly if that's your starting point. "Manipulation" is pretty emotive too. It could be said that it's unfair to try and hold your list together in an emaciated footy market, when most of your competitors have most of their players living a few suburbs away at most from where they grew up. The priority is to grow the game. The real growth areas are NSW and Queensland. Growth never comes without pain, but really this measure is about (somewhat) equalising the disparity in player markets.
TomC
Roar Guru
Just to recap, Gene has made something up about Scarlett, been called on it, ignored it and hopes no one notices. Elsewhere he has the gall to call himself objective.
Birdman
Guest
haha - match the deal of the century without COLA? Really? Believe it or not but I'm at peace on the Buddy deal - karma came to town for the Swans, the Hawks won three in a row and now we have their 5th best midfielder to build another flag campaign around. I no complain