That defeats the entite purpose of a national competition.
Unless you want to see the old zoning days and geelong has home grown country boys etc etc with other teams their own zone..
Sydney and brisbane dont have player retention issues. Only the two startup teams do which is quite normal. GWS not so much anymore as they are settling.
Essentially we havr a handful of teams receiving an unfair playing field in the league. Sydney will essentially never bottom out with the constant pipeline
It depends if the overarching purpose of the academies is more about giving priority access to high quality players to make GC, GWS etc. competitive in the AFL, or if the purpose is for the AFL to develop high quality talent in QLD and NSW (i.e., for participation and support to grow in traditionally non-football areas).
If it’s point 2, then it’s very different from the old school zoning, even though they may appear the same.