Opinion Is father-son access going to heavily dictate the next decade of premiers?

[Lavender Bushranger]

How do the clubs with the best resources get the best kids under that model?

It’s repetitive from me because I follow it but to give you an easy example from league, Penrith - ignoring their huge junior base which admittedly gives them a huge pool of players to look at to begin with - realised that there was an entire state that was untapped because teams in Sydney were waiting for players from the country to come to Sydney or to be spotted at carnivals etc before getting picked up. So they set up a far west academy 10 years ago and tonight two of those players will run out for them in a grand final and one of them will lift the trophy for them if they win.

There’s nothing stopping any club doing the same thing. The Roosters have since done the same thing on the central coast. Other clubs have done similar things.

You answered your own question.

For years, St Kilda had one recruiting guy. John Beveridge had to pretty much do it all himself. He drove to as many games as he could to identify talent.

Bigger clubs had teams of these guys. They could attend dozens of games each week all across the country to find kids. Clubs with the money and resources would send guys out all over the place to film games so they could identify kids in all sorts of obscure places.

St Kilda didn't. They couldn't afford it. They had one guy and his station wagon.

 

[Lavender Bushranger]

Your last sentence in itself is a funny thing: why does any grown adult not get to choose where they go to be a professional? We see this as normal and accept it as normal because it’s the system we’ve had in place for three and a half decades that if you want to be a professional footballer, you say ‘this is what I want to do’ and then you don’t have a choice as to where you do it. There are a couple of jobs where that happens but for the most part it’s fairly unique in itself to not have that autonomy in a profession.

Not sure what you're talking about here? It's the AFL rule. Draftees DO NOT get to choose where they go.

Unless your dad played somewhere, then you do. It's an extraordinary disadvantage to kids that didn't have a father at at AFL level.

It's grossly unfair to those kids.

 

[WilloTree]

We would have had to tanked entirely the last few seasons to make sure we had a chance get him.

Did you forget you can trade picks?

 

[GC2015]

Why should one young player get to choose which club they go to, whilst everyone else doesn't?

The historical reasoning is thought to have been sympathy - the Dees successfully lobbied to bypass the zone rules in place at the time and recruit Ron Barassi Jr due to his father, Ron Barassi Sr, being killed during WWII. Had they not succeeded in their lobbying, Barassi Jr would have been zoned to either Carlton or Collingwood.

These days it appears to have been retained for the romanticism that comes with multiple generations playing for the same club. Doesn't benefit my club so you're preaching to the choir here.

F/S access is far less probable to have a great player than a top 5 draft pick.

Unless the F/S prospect is a top 5 pick. There have been 3 of them in the last 3 drafts and we're about to see a 4th this year with Levi Ashcroft.

 

[OniAu]

The historical reasoning is thought to have been sympathy - the Dees successfully lobbied to bypass the zone rules in place at the time and recruit Ron Barassi Jr due to his father, Ron Barassi Sr, being killed during WWII. Had they not succeeded in their lobbying, Barassi Jr would have been zoned to either Carlton or Collingwood.

These days it appears to have been retained for the romanticism that comes with multiple generations playing for the same club. Doesn't benefit my club so you're preaching to the choir here.

Unless the F/S prospect is a top 5 pick. There have been 3 of them in the last 3 drafts and we're about to see a 4th this year with Levi Ashcroft.

How many havent ?

 

[GC2015]

How many havent ?

Why would that matter? If Sydney get academy access to Isaac Heeney and 50 other players don't get drafted from their academy cohort that year, does that make it less advantageous for the Swans to have access to Heeney? Surely access to top end talent is what people actually care about when it comes to these rules. Like it or not, the F/S rule has been producing many top 5 picks in recent years and that's why it's being questioned.