Most teams have a mix, a sprinkling of elite players, a group of A graders making up the top 12 or 14 players at the club, B graders with the potential to be A graders or aging higher levels and the young developing players usually recent draftees.
Setting aside the quality of coaching, the jelling of players from a group of gifted players to a gifted team, what incentives do you have to join GWS.
Ross Lyon put it succinctly in a recent interview ... Freo has 2 top 10 draft choices in the time scale where GWS has taken 50.
So most teams have maybe those 12 to 14 Elite and A graders.
GWS has maybe a dozen elite players and the entire rest of their list is A graders ... many who would be playing senior football at any other club but they are stuck in the NEAFL because too many more developed A graders are ahead of them in the queue.
If you are drafted by GWS then unless you are already elite you are going to wait .. maybe spend 2 or 3 seasons of your short AFL career playing NEAFL before either squeezing into the seniors or being shoved off to some other club for draft choices. Look what they did with Carlton last year moving on 4 players just to improve draft order and get a front seat for future drafts.
Don't give us the bull of 'we win a big game and everyone starts on poor GWS' ... there has only been one successful club in the past 3 years Hawthorn ... and 5 of the past 15 premierships have been won by COLA clubs. The followers of all the Vic clubs, the South Australian clubs and the West Australian clubs have to do it the hard way, no hand outs...
and for most of us No Success either! nobody is trying to help St Kilda or the Bulldogs or Melbourne who havent seen success in 3 generations ... we get nothing ... meanwhile some of the most gifted players in the game are shuffled each year into the GWS reserves to be saved or traded off to other clubs whenever GWS needs a top up of draft choices ... again this year they will have 2 or 3 top 10 picks even if they win the premiership ... and those 2 or 3 picks might still end up playing in the Magoos for the next 5 years ...
If you go to GWS your career is likely to stutter no matter how good you are. As a team they may not yet be a well oiled machine yet but they are stacked with A graders so you will be well back in the queue.
So the AFL wants a National Competition so the rights glean more money ... they want the teams in the non football states to be very successful so they stack the deck against the traditional states and care nothing for their supporters or for the careers of young players forced into a club where they may never play a game.
Sydney fans will never adopt GWS, they are a Rugby state ... if Sydney Swans lose 3 games in a row you can hear the crickets chirping in the outer as the fickle faithful (hypocrisy maybe from a Richmond person like me) don't turn up in their droves. Why penalize the millions of us who actually care about our clubs to give a boost to a club with more staff than supporters.
Setting aside the quality of coaching, the jelling of players from a group of gifted players to a gifted team, what incentives do you have to join GWS.
Ross Lyon put it succinctly in a recent interview ... Freo has 2 top 10 draft choices in the time scale where GWS has taken 50.
So most teams have maybe those 12 to 14 Elite and A graders.
GWS has maybe a dozen elite players and the entire rest of their list is A graders ... many who would be playing senior football at any other club but they are stuck in the NEAFL because too many more developed A graders are ahead of them in the queue.
If you are drafted by GWS then unless you are already elite you are going to wait .. maybe spend 2 or 3 seasons of your short AFL career playing NEAFL before either squeezing into the seniors or being shoved off to some other club for draft choices. Look what they did with Carlton last year moving on 4 players just to improve draft order and get a front seat for future drafts.
Don't give us the bull of 'we win a big game and everyone starts on poor GWS' ... there has only been one successful club in the past 3 years Hawthorn ... and 5 of the past 15 premierships have been won by COLA clubs. The followers of all the Vic clubs, the South Australian clubs and the West Australian clubs have to do it the hard way, no hand outs...
and for most of us No Success either! nobody is trying to help St Kilda or the Bulldogs or Melbourne who havent seen success in 3 generations ... we get nothing ... meanwhile some of the most gifted players in the game are shuffled each year into the GWS reserves to be saved or traded off to other clubs whenever GWS needs a top up of draft choices ... again this year they will have 2 or 3 top 10 picks even if they win the premiership ... and those 2 or 3 picks might still end up playing in the Magoos for the next 5 years ...
If you go to GWS your career is likely to stutter no matter how good you are. As a team they may not yet be a well oiled machine yet but they are stacked with A graders so you will be well back in the queue.
So the AFL wants a National Competition so the rights glean more money ... they want the teams in the non football states to be very successful so they stack the deck against the traditional states and care nothing for their supporters or for the careers of young players forced into a club where they may never play a game.
Sydney fans will never adopt GWS, they are a Rugby state ... if Sydney Swans lose 3 games in a row you can hear the crickets chirping in the outer as the fickle faithful (hypocrisy maybe from a Richmond person like me) don't turn up in their droves. Why penalize the millions of us who actually care about our clubs to give a boost to a club with more staff than supporters.
