Academy Watch

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GC2015 said:
Ponga moved with his family from Mackay to Brisbane in his 15th year and seemed like he was eligible for the Lions based on their attempts to sign him. Am I missing something here?
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He wouldn't have been eligible for drafting through the academy for either club. Players can be in the academy without being eligible for drafting as I pointed out.

The Beams example was because you had zone selections across all of Queensland, which was different to the academy rules. Players could decline to join as a zone selection and instead join the open draft, like Beams did.

Fahey is an unusual one. I guess it was because he rejoined his original club that he'd been part of the entire time. He wouldn't have been eligible for the Suns to take in the draft - same as the other guys who moved into zone with less than five years until their draft age.
 
dlanod said:
He wouldn't have been eligible for drafting through the academy for either club. Players can be in the academy without being eligible for drafting as I pointed out.
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I get that and that's why Weller was forced into the national draft after living on the GC for four years ,but the Lions offered Ponga a five-year contract to join them back in 2017. How would that have worked? Surely you can't offer a five-year contract to a junior that you haven't even drafted yet, right? Especially one that you have no draft rights to. Either the AFL were ready to make an exception for Ponga or there was some kind of draft tampering going on.

dlanod said:
The Beams example was because you had zone selections across all of Queensland, which was different to the academy rules. Players could decline to join as a zone selection and instead join the open draft, like Beams did.
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I only brought up the zone access in the 2008-10 period just in case it applied to when Charlie Cameron was playing footy at Marist. Through the Sexton example we can see that regardless of where Cameron was playing footy prior to 2011, he would have been zoned to the Suns if he had continued to play footy in the lead up to his draft year. The Beams example doesn't apply here because he came through before the academy zones were established, whereas Ponga and Cameron came through after the zones were established.

dlanod said:
Fahey is an unusual one. I guess it was because he rejoined his original club that he'd been part of the entire time. He wouldn't have been eligible for the Suns to take in the draft - same as the other guys who moved into zone with less than five years until their draft age.
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So it's not as straightforward as some may think and there are allowances made for juniors who move interstate at a particular age. I know we've got a bottom ager in our U18s program this year named Caleb Nancarrow and he's been boarding at Scotch College in Melbourne since he was 14 but his parents are still based in Cairns so he remains in our academy.

At what point do you draw the line, though? From an objective point of view, I would suggest our academy hasn't had a lot to do with his development between the ages of 14-18 while he's been boarding at Scotch and has been playing for Oakleigh in the U18 Talent League as well as Vic Metro at the U15 National Championships... yet he'll very likely end up being drafted to us next year. I guess it's really no different to most father-son programs where the AFL club has very little to do with the development of the junior but reaps all the benefits at the end. Take what you can get in this sport.
 
GC2015 said:
I get that and that's why Weller was forced into the national draft after living on the GC for four years ,but the Lions offered Ponga a five-year contract to join them back in 2017. How would that have worked? Surely you can't offer a five-year contract to a junior that you haven't even drafted yet, right? Especially one that you have no draft rights to. Either the AFL were ready to make an exception for Ponga or there was some kind of draft tampering going on.
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This is the first I've heard of the contract deal and it's the first you've mentioned it. NFI unless it was under the the alternate talent pathway that existed (and I think still exists) for prelisting players that are playing other sports (cf: Blicavs).
GC2015 said:
At what point do you draw the line, though? From an objective point of view, I would suggest our academy hasn't had a lot to do with his development between the ages of 14-18 while he's been boarding at Scotch and has been playing for Oakleigh in the U18 Talent League as well as Vic Metro at the U15 National Championships... yet he'll very likely end up being drafted to us next year. I guess it's really no different to most father-son programs where the AFL club has very little to do with the development of the junior but reaps all the benefits at the end. Take what you can get in this sport.
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If Fahey is the line, it seems to be whether you return to your original club.

It's also possible they didn't change the family's mailing address so from the POV of the AFL he never moved and was just training with the Suns' academy. This is how we see academy kids retaining their academy status despite boarding in Victoria - because the families still live in the zone, even though as you point out the academy really would have bugger all to do with the kid while he's away at school. Ultimately it doesn't matter where the kid is, it matters where the family is based. Another relevant example: GWS lost a kid from their academy selections because the AFL decided the family was actually based in Victoria despite their mailing address being in NSW.

Elliott Himmelberg and his family left at the start of his draft year after being in the Giants academy for six years and it was ruled that they couldn't pick him up. That's about as late as you can get, with full academy membership up until that point (his brother got drafted through it after all), and he was still made ineligible for his previous academy club to pick him up.
 

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Playing NT seems like a giant waste of time. NT shoudl either bring their u18 team down, or not participate. They had kids running around that wouldn't get a run in local club footy.

The Lions could pick a 2nd u16 team that would beat them by 15 goals, seems very wasteful to have them in the competition when its such a narrow window to play these games
 
GC2015 said:
It would appear the Ponga family moved with him to Brisbane when he was 15 years of age which seems to be borderline in terms of cancelling any previous zone affiliations. We saw the cancelling of previous zone affiliations come into play with Will Ashcroft when the AFL denied us zone access to him early last year after leaving our zone as a 14 year old but 15 seems to be unknown. Although if the zone ties were cancelled then it should (theoretically) also mean the Lions wouldn't have had zone access to Ponga either due to not spending enough time living in the zone (five years I believe) and he should have been forced to enter the open draft if he chose to pursue Aussie rules. Having said that, I assume the AFL would have made an exception in this circumstance due to it being a high profile junior athlete from the rugby codes choosing our sport instead of theirs.

Another interesting test case is Charlie Cameron. He definitely boarded at Marist Ashgrove while his family were living in Mornington Island... yet was a member of the Lions academy. How does that work? Mornington Island definitely falls under our zone and even if this was taking place prior to us entering the AFL in 2011, we still had unlimited access to all U18 Queenslanders between 2008-10. So I don't understand how Charlie Cameron was able to take part in the Lions' academy program back then.

Maybe the rules are just more clear now than they were back then?
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being part of the academy, as opposed to being tied to the academy are different things.

Shadeau Brain didnt qualify for the Lions to get priority access to him, but he was still part of their academy.

In the case of Charlie Cameron, perhaps it just wasn't practical for him to train with the Suns Academy, so he played with the Lions. I can't imagine its very convenient for Grady Turner to go down the M1 from Nudgee when the Brissie North academy base is a 5 minute drive away.

from my outside observations over the years, the academies seem to just make it up as they go, the onyl thing they can't manipulate is whether or not they have priority access, that is policed by the AFL
 
Miller1971 said:
being part of the academy, as opposed to being tied to the academy are different things.

Shadeau Brain didnt qualify for the Lions to get priority access to him, but he was still part of their academy.
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I'm aware of that. Hence the reason I referenced Lachie Weller who lived on the GC and took part in our academy program for 4 years but wasn't tied to us when the draft rolled around. That's why he ended up at Fremantle.

Miller1971 said:
In the case of Charlie Cameron, perhaps it just wasn't practical for him to train with the Suns Academy, so he played with the Lions. I can't imagine its very convenient for Grady Turner to go down the M1 from Nudgee when the Brissie North academy base is a 5 minute drive away.
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It's not convenient for Turner but he's tied to us and is taking part because those are the rules. The same can be said about Caleb Nancarrow who boards at Scotch in Melbourne but still maintains his academy tie to us through his parents' residence. Clearly he can't train with our academy on a full-time basis but the tie is still there. My guess with Charlie Cameron would be that he was playing Aussie rules for a very small amount of time while boarding in Brisbane and wasn't ever really considered anything other than a speculative invitee from someone who worked for the Lions/AFL Queensland. However, if he had chosen to pursue Aussie rules then he would have been zoned to us. Not just because his parents were still based in our zone up in Mornington Island while he boarded at Marist, but also because we had first access to all Queensland juniors between the years of 2008-2012 and Cameron was first eligible for the draft in 2012.
 

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Miller1971 said:
View attachment 1741058

Here it is.

Notable players to watch for Lions would be Owen, Hodge, Levi, Rafter and Ellen who I think is a bottom ager. Like last year with Lillico, Slater and Geesu - this year they missed an absolute star in Thompson, who I think suffered from being in a very weak regional team.
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Thanks Miller1971.

That’s disappointing for Thomson.

Makes you question those selecting the team, if well known good kids are missing out.
 
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Miller1971 said:
they did him pretty dirty with their highlights!
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Either they did him dirty or that's just him. What is noted from those highlights, he can find and demand the footy, that is good.

What he has to work on is make that possession count. Quite a few of his disposals were off target by foot and hand. If 70% disposal efficiency is correct he needs to bring that up to 80plus to move to another level.

The positive is he is 16 years of age and if he is teachable and focused on his improvements we may have another gun midfielder coming through our academy. Good signs.
 
I've seen quite a bit of him and thats definitely not 'him'.

Disposal efficiency is not the best part of his game, but he is a quality kick and is elite by hand. Looks awkward on his opposite foot, but usually hits the target.

His disposal efficiency will never be really really high, because he is an absolute contested beast and wins alot of footy in tight, so almost all of his disposals are under tackle pressure or out of congestion.

He probably used the ball better during the L3 carnival because he had better quality teammates who either block for him at stoppage, or get in the right spots for him to release the ball to them in space, rather than rush a kick out of congestion.

Old mate on social media probably had limited footage and limited opportunity to shoot footage, so used what he had.
 
Miller1971 said:
I've seen quite a bit of him and thats definitely not 'him'.

Disposal efficiency is not the best part of his game, but he is a quality kick and is elite by hand. Looks awkward on his opposite foot, but usually hits the target.

His disposal efficiency will never be really really high, because he is an absolute contested beast and wins alot of footy in tight, so almost all of his disposals are under tackle pressure or out of congestion.

He probably used the ball better during the L3 carnival because he had better quality teammates who either block for him at stoppage, or get in the right spots for him to release the ball to them in space, rather than rush a kick out of congestion.

Old mate on social media probably had limited footage and limited opportunity to shoot footage, so used what he had.
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They have full access to all the streamed games.

So I can understand where you’re coming from if that’s what they’ve cherry picked from the U16 champs.

Watching the footage, it’s all from the academy game against the Swans U16 team.
 
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