NSW Development Zones

[bilby]

Reading the thread entitled "The Balmain Dockers???" I came accross the very informative post by Oscar who detailed the relationship between their club and respective AFL Club.

He brought up an interesting point;

Since January 2006, ECE have had a full time Development Manager in Wally Gallio. His duties involve managing East Coast of course and providing development work within our zone, but with the introduction of the Sydney Scholarship Program Wally is vitally involved in identifying potential recruits for both Clubs

We can see this new schlorarship program is already starting to have a positive influence on the local game.

But could the Scholarship Program go further?

An idea that I was just pondering whilst reading Oscars post, is why not instead of each club pouring its resources into a couple of kids, why couldn't they be responsible for a whole area?

They could have control over a Sydney Metropolitan area and NSW Country Area. This is a system which I hear the SANFL has in place.

http://www.gisca.adelaide.edu.au/projects/SANFL_boundary_results.html

Not sure if this has already been brought up before, thought I might just throw it out there!

[swansrock4eva]

I suspect forcing clubs to get involved in whole areas would get a lot of clubs off-side - they'd most likely have to send players regularly, which can be disruptive, especially to a club lucky enough to have very few injuries in a season. Additionally, the extra travel, particularly for clubs in the west, could be very prohibitive - do you really want to make a bloke fly 5 hours across the country the jump in the car for another 4 to get to a rural region (I was almost tempted to say Sydney's outskirts there lol!)? And what do you do if say St Kilda gets the Pennant Hills area, traditionally a Demons-oriented area - club allegiances could be disrupted, and if not managed correctly could alienate those already involved. And what if one club is unlucky enough to get an area that doesn't have a whole lot of talent in it - a heap of money for very little return for at least a while.

At least with the scholarship program, the clubs get a choice in where to invest their money, and several have done things like employing people up here to supervise the chosen kids and to scout for more talent (St Kilda and Melbourne are two such examples). East Coast have been rather lucky in some respects, with the area being rather rich in talent, with Baulko and Penno nearby, plus Westbrook, and then all the kids at Coverdale on the program out there, but other areas and clubs aren't as lucky (as yet), which may be why most AFL clubs aren't keen to invest huge sums yet. For the moment at least, this program I think, has the potential to generate interest at lower levels (younger kids, and even non-football types to some extent), which may eventually provide an environment for AFL clubs to be happy to "manage" an entire area down the track.

[humphrey bear]

I dont think this is a very good idea.

Development of the game is the role of the NSWAFL.

Secondly and more importantly most clubs are run by volunteers who dont have the time, skills or most importantly the funds for such a ludicrous scheme. Most clubs are struggling to keep their head above water financially and this idea is unsustainable.

Lastly the SFL is not of a good enough standard to be help young potential AFL players to develop.

[bilby]

The NSWAFL has done a great job developing the game for Auskick through to the under 14/16 bracket, But we still need to keep the kids involved into under 18's and senior level.

The idea would be for the AFL Clubs to use Sydney Clubs as the base for their development. The region around the Sydney Club would be the direct development zone. In this respect we could maintain the relationships already in place between SFL and AFL Clubs.

I can see the inherent problems with clubs involvement in regards to sending players, especially to rural areas. But at this stage lets forget the whole rural area and lets just look at it from an administrative point of view! Instead of clubs spending 20k per kid, why couldn't they invest into a development officer who would administer the local sydney club and its development zone.

Then there is the problem with an unfair amount of talent in some areas. This could be unjust to some clubs, but lets look at the overall picture. Sydney has the biggest population in the country by far and how many kids have been drafted in the last couple of years? Getting some kids into the AFL is surely better than none!

We can all recognise that the SFL is not at a suitable standard to develop AFL players at this stage. Surely the introduction of professional administration into the local game would lift the professionalism and may attract other elite athletes to the local game.

And with direct involvement from AFL Clubs, it may entice talented kids to stay in the system longer as their is a increased chance they may get drafted. Also another side point is with direct AFL club involvement it may entice talent from other states, who still are hopeful of getting drafted to play in Sydney as they will be under the eye of AFL Clubs.