DO WE really need to get back in the zone?
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Hints on a radical proposal for AFL clubs to develop home-grown talent seem a far more backward step for our game than bringing back a nice nostalgic touch to recruiting.
Touted as a back-to-the-future plan mooted in AFL chief Gillon McLachlan’s national review of the game – and very much an idea in its early stages – it smacks more of bold green envy than any true forward thinking.
Sydney and Queensland-based AFL clubs have unearthed and developed a couple of gems in otherwise untapped talent, such as Sydney Swans’ Isaac Heeney.
These clubs have attracted and fostered some new talent to the game in rugby-strong territory.
Fairfax Media reported a modern form of the old VFL-day zoning system was a key talking point at a meeting between the AFL Commission and club presidents earlier this month.
Apparently, some powerful clubs are interested in having the opportunity to attract their own new talent to the game from their own designated backyards for their own academies that they can access at the back end of the draft.
Clubs could really promote the game in traditional and non-traditional sectors. Clubs could bolster the game’s hold where the threat of rival codes such as soccer could be on the rise.
Clubs could have more influence and control on their developing talent.
The general gist of basic arguments for club-specific zones all wears a little thin, especially if you take a close look at the systems and development we have here in Ballarat – a city without its own live-in AFL team. The community promotion and infiltration aspects we have in a civic partnership with the Western Bulldogs.
This alliance may only be new, about six months old, but before the Bulldogs we had North Melbourne thanks largely to its tie-in with our Victorian Football League club North Ballarat Roosters.
Players promote the game in schools, hospitals and get out working in community organisations for an annual camp. And they put on a training session, sometimes a game.
The Bulldogs want to expand their claws into the western corridor – Ballarat is a major hub in the target zone with major influence into the western region. This is a good fit.
But look closer again. Victoria’s TAC Cup under-18 competition is a far more sophisticated, professional and fairer model – supported by state programs and a national talent academy – to prepare promising AFL talent for a chance in elite ranks.
The Rebels draw in talented and committed players, sometimes quite raw talent, from across Ballarat, the Wimmera, Warrnambool, past Hamilton and this year added the Hampden region.
There are satellite training bases across the Rebels’ zone, but their base is here in Ballarat, a major regional city with close ties to all major football leagues in the area and an acute understanding of the challenges players in this region face.
How could a Melbourne-based club do any better? If you look at the archaic zoning model, young country players would get plucked from home and moved to Melbourne to train and play in AFL under-19s.
Regional TAC Cup clubs in the Rebels, Murray Bushrangers, Bendigo, Gippsland and even Geelong and Dandenong each specialised in developing their region’s talent and, in turn, the leagues most player return to.
The Rebels boast an impressive record of AFL draftees and you only need pop into their rooms on match day to see some of the great AFL action photos of players they have exported, including but definitely not limited to, Swans legend Adam Goodes, North Melbourne star Drew Petrie, Jed Adcock (Brisbane), James Frawley (Melbourne/Hawthorn), Nick Suban (Fremantle), the Brown twins Mitch (West Coast) and Nathan (Collingwood), Greater Western Sydney rising star Jeremy Cameron and The Courier columnist Jordan Roughead (Western Bulldogs).
But the Rebels’ program is about more than draftees. They are a small percentage of each year’s graduating class. Exposing players to the best players for their age in this state and exposure to leading social education programs helps build better footballers and leaders for our grassroots clubs.
There are existing state academies to further extend players. Four Rebels will line up for Vic Country for game four in the AFL national under-18 championships this weekend in Adelaide.
The 23rd man rule in the VFL further enables clubs to test players in quality senior competition alongside and against AFL-listed talent.
This system as a whole prepares good emerging AFL candidates.
AFL recruiters are always out in force, especially at national carnival time, and clubs get their chance to take a closer look at preferred candidates in Combine testing.
Club-based academies tampers with a fair uncompromised AFL draft system and can only serve to manifest a whole new set of issues and bias under their own self-serving premise.
Country football would ultimately suffer.
melanie.whelan@fairfaxmedia.com.au