List Mgmt. 2024 Father Son watch MKIII. Operation Ashcroft jnr. Featuring various academy boys.

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I don't know what connection you have with any QAFL clubs, but most of the QAFL guys on the QLD Footy board here would disagree with you here.

Not about the resources, because it's mostly human resources at underage footy, but about the resources the Lions academy puts up.

A lot of these guys have seen their colts kids go through our academy, and in their opinion, the training programs aren't any different between their colts programs or Lions academy programs. And the Lions academy still apparently relies on a lot of parent volunteers, so these people are being pulled away from volunteering at the kids club.

What do you consider a young age?

The academy isn't getting a hold of kids until they're 12/13. I have no idea how things operate at that level with the academy. Are the kids training one or two nights a week with academy coaches or volunteer parents? Are the playing in zoned academy teams against other zoned, i.e Lions southern suburbs, Lions northern suburbs, Lions western suburbs, Lions Ipswich, Lions Sunshine Coast, i.e do we have half a dozen academy teams at U13 level, and as the kids age up, the number of teams reduce and the level of talent rises?

Or, do the kids have to balance time between academy teams and their junior club?

From the outside, our academy isn't even run at a level comparable to the Victorian Talent League teams. That's not their fault. Distance and human and funding resources make it near impossible for our academy to be run at CTL levels.

QAFL doesn't need to be at a level similar to GFL or O+M. It only needs to be at a comparable level to the Coates Talent League teams, for our kids to develop at the same level as the Victorian kids playing U16 and U18 CTL.

If a kid at 16 or 17 is up to playing QAFL every week, just like Jasper Fletcher did, then he's playing at a high enough standard to develop for the AFL, when he's drafted at 18.
I was speaking of the standard of the QAFL in general, pretty difficult to compare an open aged comp to the CTL but you would have to think it is close enough to a good enough standard either way, QAFL colts is not even in the same universe though to be honest.

Interesting, I haven’t spent much time on the QLD footy board on here, of course there will be gripes with a representative type program and it is far from perfect, really there is no practical way for it to be so when you are working with large numbers of kids 13-18, what I would say is the GC based kids who do suns academy seem to really relish it and get a lot out of it in me experience, maybe the academies are run fairly differently between the GC and Bris?
 

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I was speaking of the standard of the QAFL in general, pretty difficult to compare an open aged comp to the CTL but you would have to think it is close enough to a good enough standard either way, QAFL colts is not even in the same universe though to be honest.
Everyone acknowledges that.

To be honest, there's a pretty big gap between the CTL teams and academy teams. We go down and play them when all their private school kids are playing school footy, and they're filling up with their reserves. The depth in the academy teams fall away pretty sharply from the top talent, which is one reason why our academy team so often contains so many over agers
Interesting, I haven’t spent much time on the QLD footy board on here, of course there will be gripes with a representative type program and it is far from perfect, really there is no practical way for it to be so when you are working with large numbers of kids 13-18, what I would say is the GC based kids who do suns academy seem to really relish it and get a lot out of it in me experience, maybe the academies are run fairly differently between the GC and Bris?
Sounds like if you listen to people who have knowledge of both, which has been discussed a fair bit on here recently.
 
The Saints have had a sook about everything, not just father sons.
To be fair I think they have to as one of the small poor unsuccessful Melbourne clubs (same as North and the Dogs). If they dont fight for every scrap the big clubs and the AFL will walk all over them and push them out of the state as soon as possible. They are constantly caught in that mediocre performance loop but without the really big advantages the other big Melbourne clubs have
 
Why is a change even needed? Like honestly, look at the league this year, it is the tightest it has been in a long time. There are literally like 3 teams that can't make finals or be competitive week in, week out. To me, right now, this shows the system is working right now, why screw with it until it isn't working?

On top of it all, they have just made themselves look embarrassingly incompetent with the way they've gone about it all. This is just a total screw up on every level, it is embarrassing and dare I say it...NRL level administration.
 
Interesting to hear Fages basically confirm that Levi is coming next year. I know the club very tactfully danced around the question in 2022 until Will formally confirmed in I think August.

Little drop of the guard here perhaps?

 
Similarly, I’ve argued many times, our academy isn’t bringing new players to the game.

All of our academy successes were already playing AFL as juniors.

And we’ve been over this ground before, whether our academy offers better coaching than what the kids receive at QAFL level.
Our academy and the Gold Coast's give Queensland kids a platform to be seen and now as those academies play the kids are on a national platform not hidden away. The academies also give Queensland kids proximity to the best players, the most professional players and they get to see first hand what is required from training, pre-game and post game management.

A kid playing for 18 year old kid playing for Sherwood would be site unseen - well unless of course there was another Covid outbreak and the AFL teams were re-located to Qld again.
 
Noosa wasn’t even in the QAFL at that point so I’d imagine the academy played a role in keeping him playing football
You are perfectly correct - in fact I've inside knowledge to say you're perfectly right. So to Fullerton who's dad was a basketball and played a bit of footy so the Bullets threw everything at Fullerton and he want that way but the Lions stayed in touch and he eventually came back. Kids are very much influenced by their parents and we must remember that. Dual sports kids often choose what their parents support or played, not that their parents tell them what to choose it's just that kids can follow what their parents appear most passionate about.
 
St Kilda happy to point the finger elsewhere, but their list management decisions have been less than stellar. Sure, drafting always carries with it an element of risk, but they've traded away draft picks for players with questionable upside like Jake Carlisle, Dan Hannebury & Zak Jones. Like us they were arguably unlucky to have high picks in one of the weakest drafts in memory on 2017. But they also have drafted poorly overall in that 20-40 range when they haven't traded those picks away.

They seem to think money is what's going to help players choose them, so in that sense they're right that free agency doesn't work like it was envisaged. Unfortunately, whatever they do, they seem to do slightly worse than everyone else and that's on the board and the footy department.

And if there's one club who has the experience of looking outside for blame when they should have looking inside, it's us.
 
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Why is a change even needed? Like honestly, look at the league this year, it is the tightest it has been in a long time. There are literally like 3 teams that can't make finals or be competitive week in, week out. To me, right now, this shows the system is working right now, why screw with it until it isn't working?

On top of it all, they have just made themselves look embarrassingly incompetent with the way they've gone about it all. This is just a total screw up on every level, it is embarrassing and dare I say it...NRL level administration.
I guess certain people need to justify their positions somehow and swing their weight around to be seen as the new top dog that shouldn’t be missed with no matter how stupid they look. Surely there’s more pressing issues in the game that they clearly aren’t prioritising.
 

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I guess certain people need to justify their positions somehow and swing their weight around to be seen as the new top dog that shouldn’t be missed with no matter how stupid they look. Surely there’s more pressing issues in the game that they clearly aren’t prioritising.
Not specifically talking about this draft shemozzle but generally in society today there are too many bureaucrat types trying to justify their own existence, change for changes sake.
 
Why is a change even needed?
VaFL is scared Gold Coast is about dominate the next decade after some very generous draft concession, and an apparent convey belt of top end academy talent, that will see them avoid the cycle of competing for a flag, then dropping back to the bottom of the draft, before rebuilding and competing again.
Like honestly, look at the league this year, it is the tightest it has been in a long time. There are literally like 3 teams that can't make finals or be competitive week in, week out. To me, right now, this shows the system is working right now, why screw with it until it isn't working?

On top of it all, they have just made themselves look embarrassingly incompetent with the way they've gone about it all. This is just a total screw up on every level, it is embarrassing and dare I say it...NRL level administration.
 
St Kilda happy to point the finger elsewhere, but their list management decisions have been less than stellar. Sure, drafting always carries with it an element of risk, but they've traded away draft picks for players with questionable upside like Jake Carlisle, Dan Hannebury & Zak Jones. Like us they were arguably unlucky to have high picks in one of the weakest drafts in memory on 2017. But they also have drafted poorly overall in that 20-40 range when they haven't traded those picks away.

They seem to think money is what's going to help players choose them, so in that sense they're right that free agency doesn't work like it was envisaged. Unfortunately, whatever they do, they seem to do slightly worse than everyone else and that's on the board and the footy department.

And if there's one club who has the experience of looking outside for blame when they should have looking inside, it's us.
Not to mention under Ross Lyon at the end of 09 they traded for Andrew Lovett for a pick in the teens only to sack him before the 10 season after he was charged with rape and as unfortunate as that was it accords with them often taking punts on questionable characters which regularly bites them on the arse.
 
St Kilda happy to point the finger elsewhere, but their list management decisions have been less than stellar. Sure, drafting always carries with it an element of risk, but they've traded away draft picks for players with questionable upside like Jake Carlisle, Dan Hannebury & Zak Jones. Like us they were arguably unlucky to have high picks in one of the weakest drafts in memory on 2017. But they also have drafted poorly overall in that 20-40 range when they haven't traded those picks away.

They seem to think money is what's going to help players choose them, so in that sense they're right that free agency doesn't work like it was envisaged. Unfortunately, whatever they do, they seem to do slightly worse than everyone else and that's on the board and the footy department.

And if there's one club who has the experience of looking outside for blame when they should have looking inside, it's us.

If only Saintsfooty took Bont instead of Billings, Petracca instead of McCartin, and Curnow instead of Gresham. Stand to be corrected but think they took Sinclair in the rookie draft, that's one of not many ticks you can give them.
 
i think the issue that saints, north, footscray and melbourne are going to face going forward is that building a list that can contend purely through the draft is close to impossible now with 18 teams let alone when we expand to 19..... the other clubs have levers they can pull to get talent in through other means:

  • academies for northern clubs
  • go home lure SA and WA teams
  • 'lifestyle' for geelong
  • big club draw and perks for the big 4 + hawks

what chance do the small victorian teams have to be true contenders without fluke aligning of the planets? they are consistently ignored at the trade table by in demand players for their competitors even when theyre winning. players wanting to return to victoria almost always prefer going to a bigger club than them. mergers between the 4 small vic clubs should really be on the table if they want to imrove competitive balance.

i do find saints whinging of all clubs rather hilarious though. they got their only half decent midfielder for pennies in a GWS fire sale. all the victorian clubs ended up being significant beneficiaries from the concessions granted to GWS and GCS.
 
Given Kingsley only just moved up here I can't see how his kid is going to meet the five year requirement for academy drafting (four at most by my count).

McCartney could be since he's been here a while.

The funniest part is both work for the Giants but their kids are in the Swans academy. Obviously they're living somewhere a bit more east than west.
 
It makes sense that the son of Lions legend Luke Hodge would want to play for his fathers team.
Next year the Lions should announce their team of the Century so far with a backline of >

Chris Johnson, Harris Andrews, Chris Scott.
Luke Hodge, Justin Leppitsch, Daniel Rich.

Sure to keep Cooper a Lion for life.
 
See the Suns have thrown a grenade at the AFL over the academies - good on them

Great that he is pushing for equality but that is never gonna happen.
But I do think a push for all VIC teams to play atleast one home game outside of Victoria or (Tassie for North and Hawks) would be more reachable.
Melbourne play a game in Darwin which is great. But all other VIC teams should do the same as a show of good faith.

Maybe a team like Geelong come to GC to play a home game against us as an example.
 

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List Mgmt. 2024 Father Son watch MKIII. Operation Ashcroft jnr. Featuring various academy boys.

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