What should we do with private school football?

Soccer in Australia has no control over private school pathways of soccer players, just public schools do they have a say.

Your saying private schools are not obligated to care about the Socceroos and are not elite soccer academies and rabbid dog soccer fans should back off.

There is some good private school soccer. Some sorta private schools Sydney or nsw state knockout comp etc. I often would get annoyed at private schools with there lack of concern for developing more competitive competition structures to help the wallabies etc. but facts are they don’t wanna help elite sport the school boards that run these private schools, and don’t see at as obligation to help Aussie national sports teams. So to cut it short, private schools don’t wanna help A-League franchises or the Socceroos become more competitive and don’t care at all how well or how bad the Socceroos go. All I can add is, be grateful soccer is even on there schools sports curriculum as for most of these private schools history, soccer wasn’t even a sport offered at these schools…

Dunga i think it was, Brazil captn, was a rich kid. It doesn’t matter your background, anyone can play football.

Lionheart -Many years ago I was asked to go watch a player playing with the Mt Gravatt junior under 13 team playing at a ground in the Centenary suburbs. After the game I was asked by my friend what I thought. My advice was to get him, the player, back into his favoured goalkeeping position ASAP. During this conversation I asked as to who was the little kid playing in midfield as he was outstanding amongst his team-mates. That kid was -------Matt Mackay, and the friend who I suggested go back to goal went on to play at Inter Milan, the Danish champions, and Melbourne Victory. So they can be spotted soon enough if they are good enough. Cheers jb.

Out of the 150 or so boys on the Roar academy, around 90 of them play in the SPL public school system. The rest in the GPS system. The ones in the GPS system are on varying degrees of scholarships ie full ride, 75% or half fees etc. Because of the scholarship those boys, for a part of the season have to put school football first so they can maintain their scholarships. Ironic, considering they only have scholarships because they play for the Roar. There is no evidence that i can see that the GPS system produces better footballers, but they can attract promising young footballers under the guise of a better education.

Excessive training and pressure is something that is a huge issue with womens gymnastics because the window passes at a young age. There are a lot of cases in tennis as well where kids are trained relentlessly as children, Williams sisters, Agassi. What it has to do with rugby league and Hayne to me is a mystery, problem with Hayne is his binge drinking, not a lack of social skills. If Hayne was more dedicated and avoided binge drinking things would be different.

Agree. The general good of football will be better served by more investment in public schools.

didn’t hurt Corey Brown, or Warren Moon. Also hear that M McKay has spotted at least one recruit for the Roar academy in his current role, very promising apparently.

For what it's worth, I've recommended more players from public schools rather then private.

A significant portion of private schools have a boarding component. Boarders do not have parents available to whip them around to various clubs for training, volunteer at the club, buy different sets of uniforms etc. Catering for such students, most of whom enjoy athletic pursuits, results in an emphasis on school-centred sporting activities, particularly once duty-of-care considerations are taken into account.

I have had no contact with PS football for some years now but when I did I was astounded at how far behind were the kids in their coaching programmes. One kid, playing left fullback in a 4-3-3 formation was standing on the halfway line while his team was attacking far forward on the right. When I asked him why he did not push forward into the space available he struck me dumb by telling me he was told by the coach to stay in his own half of the field as he was a "defender". This kid was 15 years of age. While wandering around the complex at half time I watched 4 kids warming up for the next game. Each put a foot on the ball ,ran back 3 or 4 metres and then ran forward to blast the ball over the bar. Counting the poor goalie there were 4 kids tied up in this exercise. I called them together and pointed out a better way for the exercise citing that very few times during a game did you get the pleasure of stopping a ball going back and then running to have a shot. Instead I instructed the goalie to pass the ball to the two "outsiders" who stopped the ball and passed it to the central man who had a shot at the moving ball. This "formation" could be changed in order to give everyone a different task and yet improved passing skills and shooting technique in these 3 kids. Ten minutes later I looked at them and they were going through the exercise perfectly. Their "coach"?. I found out later he was a teacher who had got a coaching certificate on the internet !!!!! Nuff said. jb

I'm always amused at the default reaction to the mention of private schools. Rich kids living a privileged life. That's true for some, the Grammar Schools and a few others, but nothing could be further from the truth for a majority private schools. As for their football, I would think the more avenues for play that are available the healthier the game will be. Certainly Roar has, over the years a number of players who have played for their school, private and State, and ex players who have coached school teams, a great way to gain experience as a coach. A move to NPL for schools would be a loss, although I can see how some schools in some areas where competition is limited, might benefit.

Good point about schools demanding that they play for them on Saturdays and not their local clubs etc. That sense of entitlement (ie their school sport is more important than local Saturday sport) didn't go down too well in football circles. Have they abandoned that approach for football?

Whoever is good enough to play NPL already is playing in NPL and there is nothing more a Private School can help further their careers. The top clubs have significantly better facilities than most top private schools for training all age groups. A private school is usually only for high school age. Plus top juniors football is already expensive enough so we don't need prices going up and than being asked for more donations on top of that for a library or something that has nothing to do with football.

The private schools offer scholarships for rugby players I think their interest in football is only to be more attractive to fee paying students I haven't heard of anyone getting scholarships though have been out of the loop for quite a while. Englands national rugby team most of the black players were given scholarships to the top English schools one after their first game , one of their adopted Pacific islanders was an illegal immigrant at the same time as being on scholarship to one of their schools and the school took the legal action to keep him in the country. It does accomodate for those who have rich parents and want a big name school and having a football program included. The Central Coast speciality school would be a lot better, and is much cheaper though it would be preferrable that they also offer scholarships as well. People understimate the difficulty of finding and producing quality footballers and its so much harder than in any other sport. There are any number of kids overseas at academies where they have schooling built in . Qatar trialled millions of kids and offer a completely paid life in Qatar. UAE their big player was Yemeni refugee they moved his whole family to the UAE . Its no coincidence the only player of note that The Chance discovered worldwide was Rogic . In the rest of the world they are interested in talent but they still cater to exploiting parents with money, in Australia as opposed to the rest of the world they are only interested in the parents wealth. I first saw Rogic in a video posted by someone to highlight their Croatian team in a grand final in Canberra. I said this bloke should be hired by the A-league and I didnt know at the time he was so young. Why exactly was Rogic ignored , the only reason is that his parents werent rich and how was this linked to him being ignored by the AIS. The AIS produced very little in the last period before it was stopped. If we are only looking for talent in the 5% that have the money and the parents are willing to part with it then there is your problem summed up.

This is an interesting article Private schools [PS] have revenue to pour into sports development well beyond state schools and local grass roots park teams. In the main PS parents are well off, may with business connections. Rugby has, well in Sydney at a junior level badly been hurt by PS at junior level. The reason is simply because when the PS play on a Saturday these take players away from their park teams… It became so bad that I think Pulver then moved the Saturday park games to Sunday which near killed many local park teams as parents wanted Sunday for family not going to watch junior rugby. Personally a well structured mid week competition would be good and when they do things they normally do them well…. so yes its a good idea if structurally set up well…..

Private schools will do whatever their clientele demands - and it will always come with a big dollar price tag. As a general rule, private schools require their students to put the school above club sport, so not sure if that's conducive to what the article is looking for.

Or we could let kids enjoy their sport. There are so many pressures on high school age kids to perform without a moments respite. Why not let them enjoy themselves? A number of uni's are moving in this regard. Some of the medical colleges are not allowing enrolments because the high achiever kids have spent their entire high school life focussed on the one goal of getting into medicine (or similar), Unfortunately it has been found that this dedication has meant they have never learned many life and social skills. To counter this, these courses are now post-grad or require evidence of real-world life skills. There is a fair bit of anecdotal evidence that the sports industry has fallen into much of the same trap. (See today's Hayne headlines as an example). Maybe this focus on school children by professional sports is not as healthy for the kids as it could be.