Forest St End
All Australian
- Feb 3, 2022
- 789
- 914
- AFL Club
- Collingwood
Bendigo is a shitload bigger than it was 20 years ago, what are kids doing today? The inception of development squads is pushing more kids away from playing, as if they don't make a squad, they give up, where's the afl to grow our participation rates from auskick to senior footy, I'm not sure they care, as long as elite talent is spotted and drafted
The world has changed. Kids are on screens and getting jobs to try and get ahead in the world now. Parents are working more and more hours and don’t have time or money for sports.
There’s also a huge array of sports to choose from and every single one of them has some bullshit pathway system that tries to lock kids in to squads and extra training sessions which means they can’t try other sports.
When we were kids just about every boy played footy until they were 15 or 16. Now I doubt it is even a quarter of them.
The way numbers have declined over the past 20 years, if we see anything like a repeat of that in the next 20 we will lose 50% of the teams we have now.