List Mgmt. Parent/Child Prospects vs Club Academies

[HairyO]

The AFL should be paying for these academy’s so the players go into the open draft and keep the integrity of the game


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And possibly have slightly different matching rules for the northern states.

But as I said, son of a HOF and possibly even Legend surely isnt what the Academies were intended for.

 

[Haggas]

And possibly have slightly different matching rules for the northern states.

But as I said, son of a HOF and possibly even Legend surely isnt what the Academies were intended for.

Yeah I agree


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[GC2015]

And possibly have slightly different matching rules for the northern states.

But as I said, son of a HOF and possibly even Legend surely isnt what the Academies were intended for.

I'll start by pointing out that just because a player reaches HOF/Legend status, doesn't mean the club should have exclusive access to his kids. Tony Lockett is a HOF/Legend in anyone's books for what he did in Sydney yet the F/S rules currently dictate that St Kilda (183 games) would have access to any son of his and Sydney (98 games) would miss out.

So you can't just make a blanket statement that someone's achievements at a club should take priority and automatically rule out any other avenue into the AFL. There are many avenues into the AFL such as the national draft, F/S access, NGA access, northern academy access, international access, 3-year non registered player access etc and sometimes a player is eligible for more than one of those avenues so they get to pick their preference.

In Luke Hodge's case, he did play for Brisbane so it would be a true statement to say Cooper Hodge would be playing for the same club his father did if he chooses the academy option over F/S access to Hawthorn. It's just that Luke didn't reach the arbitrary number of games for Brisbane that the AFL currently feels is enough to have priority access to his kids. Let's also not forget it's a number that can change at any time if the AFL feels altering it (Carlton once got F/S access to a player whose father played just 20 games for the Blues).

When it goes the other way though, it's constant complaining from Vic supporters. The amount of Hawthorn supporters who have let me know that Noah Anderson should be playing for the Hawks is troubling. Dean Anderson did not play 100 games for Hawthorn but for some reason Hawks supporters will have you believe they should have had F/S access to his son, but in the same breath they'll also tell you Luke Hodge did not play 100 games for Brisbane and therefore his son should absolutely not have any option to join the Lions. It's a complete contradiction.

North supporters pushed the same narrative about Josh Kelly when he was drafted to GWS, despite the fact that Phil Kelly only played 61 games for Roos. All these narratives are designed to advantage the Vic clubs and that's the purpose at the end of the day. The fact of the matter is Cooper Hodge will have completed the necessary residency requirements to be academy eligible for Brisbane once his draft year rolls around and then he has the choice to either join Hawthorn as a F/S pick or Brisbane as an academy selection.

 

[HairyO]

I'll start by pointing out that just because a player reaches HOF/Legend status, doesn't mean the club should have exclusive access to his kids. Tony Lockett is a HOF/Legend in anyone's books for what he did in Sydney yet the F/S rules currently dictate that St Kilda (183 games) would have access to any son of his and Sydney (98 games) would miss out.

So you can't just make a blanket statement that someone's achievements at a club should take priority and automatically rule out any other avenue into the AFL. There are many avenues into the AFL such as the national draft, F/S access, NGA access, northern academy access, international access, 3-year non registered player access etc and sometimes a player is eligible for more than one of those avenues so they get to pick their preference.

In Luke Hodge's case, he did play for Brisbane so it would be a true statement to say Cooper Hodge would be playing for the same club his father did if he chooses the academy option over F/S access to Hawthorn. It's just that Luke didn't reach the arbitrary number of games for Brisbane that the AFL currently feels is enough to have priority access to his kids. Let's also not forget it's a number that can change at any time if the AFL feels altering it (Carlton once got F/S access to a player whose father played just 20 games for the Blues).

When it goes the other way though, it's constant complaining from Vic supporters. The amount of Hawthorn supporters who have let me know that Noah Anderson should be playing for the Hawks is troubling. Dean Anderson did not play 100 games for Hawthorn but for some reason Hawks supporters will have you believe they should have had F/S access to his son, but in the same breath they'll also tell you Luke Hodge did not play 100 games for Brisbane and therefore his son should absolutely not have any option to join the Lions. It's a complete contradiction.

North supporters pushed the same narrative about Josh Kelly when he was drafted to GWS, despite the fact that Phil Kelly only played 61 games for Roos. All these narratives are designed to advantage the Vic clubs and that's the purpose at the end of the day. The fact of the matter is Cooper Hodge will have completed the necessary residency requirements to be academy eligible for Brisbane once his draft year rolls around and then he has the choice to either join Hawthorn as a F/S pick or Brisbane as an academy selection.

The bigger problem is its 100 games for guys, 1 game for girls. Its stupid and the AFL desperately want even just one mother / daughter for the story.

The rule is 100 games. Would I like Anderson? Sure. But the Hawks could have had his dad make the milestone if they really valued the whole F/S thing.

Id rather a balanced system, if I had to choose. No matching in the 1st round is the easiest fix.

 

[Enviable Tradition]

The AFL should be paying for these academy’s so the players go into the open draft and keep the integrity of the game


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Yes all of those Northern States premierships are getting out of control...

If we are worried about integrity of the game there are other places to start

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[Lavender Bushranger]

In light of Cooper Hodge making the SSA U15 All-Australian boys’ team, it’s generated a heavy discussion in the 2026 AFL draft general discussion thread pertaining to the notion that the parent/child rule supersedes the academies in club preference or should take precedence.

Instead of clogging up draft threads, discuss here but no playing the man.

Play the ball.
Be convivial.
No being accusatorial.

If none of these are adhered to, I give the mods the power to lock this thread.

What sort of scrote lays down ground rules for a thread they post?

 

[rye]

What sort of scrote lays down ground rules for a thread they post?

you are breaking rule 2: be convivial

mods. please take action.

 

[GC2015]

The bigger problem is its 100 games for guys, 1 game for girls. Its stupid and the AFL desperately want even just one mother / daughter for the story.

The rule is 100 games. Would I like Anderson? Sure. But the Hawks could have had his dad make the milestone if they really valued the whole F/S thing.

Id rather a balanced system, if I had to choose. No matching in the 1st round is the easiest fix.

If you want a truly balanced system then you should be pushing for the F/S rule to be removed entirely. My club and the Giants won't have F/S access to any players for at least another 10 years or so. Meanwhile Vic clubs have had the opportunity to benefit from the rule since it was first introduced. That's not balanced at all. In the 2021 draft GWS bid on Sam Darcy with their pick 2 and we (the Suns) bid on Nick Daicos with our pick 4. How different would the league look right now if Nick Daicos was a Gold Coast Sun?

It's not perfect but the northern academies help to equalise this situation for both the Suns and Giants.

Yes all of those Northern States premierships are getting out of control...

If we are worried about integrity of the game there are other places to start

A whopping 5 premierships have been won by teams based in Queensland or New South Wales since the league first expanded interstate over 40 years ago. Hawthorn alone have won 9 premierships in that same timeframe.

 

[HairyO]

If you want a truly balanced system then you should be pushing for the F/S rule to be removed entirely. My club and the Giants won't have F/S access to any players for at least another 10 years or so. Meanwhile Vic clubs have had the opportunity to benefit from the rule since it was first introduced. That's not balanced at all. In the 2021 draft GWS bid on Sam Darcy with their pick 2 and we (the Suns) bid on Nick Daicos with our pick 4. How different would the league look right now if Nick Daicos was a Gold Coast Sun?

It's not perfect but the northern academies help to equalise this situation for both the Suns and Giants.


A whopping 5 premierships have been won by teams based in Queensland or New South Wales since the league first expanded interstate over 40 years ago. Hawthorn alone have won 9 premierships in that same timeframe.

Or you could say 5 in the last 23 years, rather than 40 years. By 2 teams out of 16 at the time (GCS doesnt really count in 2012).

 

[GC2015]

Or you could say 5 in the last 23 years, rather than 40 years.

I could but that wouldn't be a fair reflection of the amount of years there has been a team based in New South Wales in the VFL/AFL. It's been over 35 years since both QLD & NSW have had teams competing in the AFL.

2 premierships for NSW in 40 years. 3 premierships for QLD in 35 years. 9 premierships for Hawthorn in 40 years and 7 premierships in 35 years.

 

[HairyO]

I could but that wouldn't be a fair reflection of the amount of years there has been a team based in New South Wales in the VFL/AFL. It's been over 35 years since both QLD & NSW have had teams competing in the AFL.

2 premierships for NSW in 40 years. 3 premierships for QLD in 35 years. 9 premierships for Hawthorn in 40 years and 7 premierships in 35 years.

2 of the 4 teams didnt even exist til 10 years ago. And 30 years ago there was only a single northern team. So using 40 years ago as comparison is disingenuous at best.

 

[Outtatym]

Remove all doubt and scrap all of it. Father-son is sentimental and all but it compromises the comp too much imo and the academy's are a rort. There has to be other ways to develop elite kids in 'non football' states and keep them in the game.

As it is, if a player wants to play somewhere they usually end up there anyway, but the club that picks them up should be able to shoot their shot at keeping them and be compensated via trade if they want out, not miss the chance entirely

 

[SSwans2011]

For every Nick Blakey

22

Nick Blakey

Age

24

Ht

196cm

Wt

83kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

9.9

3star

K

7.0

3star

HB

2.9

3star

M

2.3

2star

T

2.4

4star

MG

189.1

3star

D

8.1

2star

K

6.3

3star

HB

1.9

1star

M

2.1

2star

T

2.6

4star

MG

189.1

3star

D

7.2

2star

K

5.2

2star

HB

2.0

2star

M

1.2

2star

T

1.2

3star

, there's a Josh Dunkley

5

Josh Dunkley

Age

27

Ht

191cm

Wt

87kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

21.8

5star

K

10.4

4star

HB

11.3

5star

M

4.3

4star

T

5.8

5star

CL

3.2

5star

D

20.7

5star

K

7.0

3star

HB

13.7

5star

M

2.3

2star

T

5.3

5star

CL

2.7

4star

D

14.2

4star

K

7.2

3star

HB

7.0

5star

M

4.8

5star

T

4.0

5star

CL

1.4

4star

or Marc Murphy.

Much like Dunkley and Murphy, Blakey didn't want to leave his home state.

I've seen a lot of whinging that F/S should take precedence over Academies, but I am pretty sure that is already the case?

The draftees get to decide if they are taken as F/S, even if they have been a part of, and benefitted from, the academy system for several years.

 

[The 747]

Remove all doubt and scrap all of it. Father-son is sentimental and all but it compromises the comp too much imo and the academy's are a rort. There has to be other ways to develop elite kids in 'non football' states and keep them in the game.

As it is, if a player wants to play somewhere they usually end up there anyway, but the club that picks them up should be able to shoot their shot at keeping them and be compensated via trade if they want out, not miss the chance entirely

Yes just keep the academies but don't allow bullshit like "sons of AFL players would be lost to the game if not for academy".....

The problem in a very competitive competition is that when the rules are poorly made (hai AFL) clubs will inevitably game them.

 

[Thommo 42]

I think the academy serves two main purposes. Bringing new players to the game that likely wouldn't have been exposed in the past and retaining talent that may have otherwise chosen to pursue another sport. We've seen plenty of examples of this going the other way in both Queensland in New South Wales with recent examples being rugby league players like Tom Trbojevic (Swans Academy), Kalyn Ponga (Brisbane Academy) and Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow (Gold Coast Academy) all playing junior Aussie rules and showing talent while being members of the northern academies but choosing to pursue rugby league instead.

Now some may say those examples don't apply to the Cooper Hodge situation because they didn't come from footy backgrounds and that may be a fair criticism, but we've also seen talented juniors from footy backgrounds lost to other sports as well. Darren Lockyer's father played in the QAFL for 10+ years and was very much an Aussie rules man who signed up Darren for junior footy in his younger years. Darren won several club B&Fs as a junior but over the course of the years that followed he stopped playing Aussie rules and started playing rugby league with his friends. Skip forward 20 years and he becomes one of the greatest rugby league players of all time when he could have been an Aussie rules footballer instead if he was given more opportunities.

Patty Mills from Canberra also may have pursued footy if the Swans Academy existed back then but it didn't and he ended up in the NBA instead. There's many, many examples of talented athletes from QLD & NSW showing talent in footy and being lost to the game for any number of reasons. It's not a perfect system but the northern academies do reduce the likelihood of losing talented athletes to other codes, regardless of whether the junior comes from a footy background or not.

There is a bit of truth to this. I've been involved in youth footy for a long time and we still see talented kids being lost to other codes.

Isreal Leota in my opinion is a young kid that would have been a first round draft pick. He went off to Ipswich Grammar on a track scholarship, played Rugby Union for them and had always played Rugby League as well. He was Lions Academy member, made QLD u15 schoolboys and then gave up footy and is now a contracted Broncos player first year out of school.

My own son who is 14, was at the same school on a track scholarship and felt a shitload of pressure to play Rugby and he did play from years 5 to 8. The Reds Academy approached us about 5 times but his love for footy was strong and he has stayed with it and gave rugby away this year, we also moved him to a different school now where they play footy (for different reasons, but the footy was a great silver lining). At one point in Years 6 and 7, it wasn't out of the question he would switch and hes in a pretty committed footy family, and I'm president of a State League club.

Going back 25+ years, I moved up here and also went to IGS on a cricket scholarship. I had played state footy for Victoria as a 12 year old, but when I was 15 I gave it away for Rugby as that was the dominant sport and all my mates played it. I didn't find my way back to footy until I was 25 and I still wish I never made that dumb decision as a 15 year old, and my old man didn't really try to stop me and he played 2 games of VFL footy in the 70's and was an O&M coach, so we were a strong footy family. Maybe the existence of an academy back then might have stopped me? Who knows? though just the existence of any sort of true orgsnised club footy would have helped! Not even that was available to me then without driving over an hour.

 

[GC2015]

I've seen a lot of whinging that F/S should take precedence over Academies, but I am pretty sure that is already the case?

The draftees get to decide if they are taken as F/S, even if they have been a part of, and benefitted from, the academy system for several years.

Correct. We're very likely to see this play out with Kalani White in two years from now. Suns pump six years of development into him since the U12s level and he chooses to go F/S to the Dees in his draft year.

 

[big_e]

I'll start by pointing out that just because a player reaches HOF/Legend status, doesn't mean the club should have exclusive access to his kids. Tony Lockett is a HOF/Legend in anyone's books for what he did in Sydney yet the F/S rules currently dictate that St Kilda (183 games) would have access to any son of his and Sydney (98 games) would miss out.

So you can't just make a blanket statement that someone's achievements at a club should take priority and automatically rule out any other avenue into the AFL. There are many avenues into the AFL such as the national draft, F/S access, NGA access, northern academy access, international access, 3-year non registered player access etc and sometimes a player is eligible for more than one of those avenues so they get to pick their preference.

In Luke Hodge's case, he did play for Brisbane so it would be a true statement to say Cooper Hodge would be playing for the same club his father did if he chooses the academy option over F/S access to Hawthorn. It's just that Luke didn't reach the arbitrary number of games for Brisbane that the AFL currently feels is enough to have priority access to his kids. Let's also not forget it's a number that can change at any time if the AFL feels altering it (Carlton once got F/S access to a player whose father played just 20 games for the Blues).

When it goes the other way though, it's constant complaining from Vic supporters. The amount of Hawthorn supporters who have let me know that Noah Anderson should be playing for the Hawks is troubling. Dean Anderson did not play 100 games for Hawthorn but for some reason Hawks supporters will have you believe they should have had F/S access to his son, but in the same breath they'll also tell you Luke Hodge did not play 100 games for Brisbane and therefore his son should absolutely not have any option to join the Lions. It's a complete contradiction.

North supporters pushed the same narrative about Josh Kelly when he was drafted to GWS, despite the fact that Phil Kelly only played 61 games for Roos. All these narratives are designed to advantage the Vic clubs and that's the purpose at the end of the day. The fact of the matter is Cooper Hodge will have completed the necessary residency requirements to be academy eligible for Brisbane once his draft year rolls around and then he has the choice to either join Hawthorn as a F/S pick or Brisbane as an academy selection.

North supporters' whinge was that the rule changed some time between Jonathan Brown being a father son after his dad played 50 games and when we finally could have had access to a good one, at which point the threshold was 100 games.

It was all pretty harmless, we knew we weren't going to get him in the draft.

 

[Bianconeri]

Remove all doubt and scrap all of it. Father-son is sentimental and all but it compromises the comp too much imo and the academy's are a rort. There has to be other ways to develop elite kids in 'non football' states and keep them in the game.

As it is, if a player wants to play somewhere they usually end up there anyway, but the club that picks them up should be able to shoot their shot at keeping them and be compensated via trade if they want out, not miss the chance entirely

Remove the draft completely and allow clubs to have open academies.

 

[Kings of Lygon]

What about Mother-Son? Wouldn't mind having a son on Eb Marinoff running around with the Crows.

AFLW board.

Not trying to derail this thread though, it's Father/Son. Not taking anything away from the athletes, but the AFLW is too much of a Mickey Mouse competition at this point to start enacting rules like that. Maybe in the future.

 

[Mattrox]

Because women don't have sons that want to play for the same club.....

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[dmt]

I’d rather they lowered it to 50 games for father son

 

[radiojake]

I’d rather they lowered it to 50 games for father son

Yeah Geelong have been on the wrong end of the F/S gravy boat, need to throw them some love

 

[dmt]

Yeah Geelong have been on the wrong end of the F/S gravy boat, need to throw them some love

Both Adelaide and Geelong have a lot in common. Meth riddled country towns with 3 perennial underachieving clubs representing.

I don’t believe Adelaide should qualify as a city. Last night I drove from top to bottom of the cbd in 5 mins.

 

[Kings of Lygon]

Because women don't have sons that want to play for the same club.....

When the AFLW becomes more legitimate, no worries.

But 10 games? Not playing each team at least once? Player movement all over the place? Athletes who come from or play other sports and do AFLW in their spare time or vice versa?

Not for mine. People aren't allowed to say it or are scared to because of the inevitable backlash; but it's essentially an exhibition carnival and not a profitable or well watched one.

 

[Mattrox]

When the AFLW becomes more legitimate, no worries.

But 10 games? Not playing each team at least once? Player movement all over the place? Athletes who come from or play other sports and do AFLW in their spare time or vice versa?

Not for mine. People aren't allowed to say it or are scared to because of the inevitable backlash; but it's essentially an exhibition carnival and not a profitable or well watched one.

3 time premiership players..... come on. It's an emerging comp. If you have 3 time premiership players in your team, their kids deserve the opportunity for a club legacy.

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