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Anyone got a cigarette?

What do you mean the integrity of the Father/Son rule? He can still go to North under the Father Son rule if he wants.

Dear North. Blakey doesn't want to go to your club. Just like Heeney, Dusty, Josh Kelly, and pretty much every other decent uncontracted player in the last few years.

It's almost as though Josh Dunkley didn't choose the "Vic based Academy system" over his Father/Son connections. If Blakey wants to play for North, he'll choose North.

That's bang on. You can't force a 4 year contract onto a teenager. The answer is to relax the Academy rules for the Queensland clubs for a period to build up their local talent base. Just give them a free shot at their local kids for 5 years and ignore the whinging from the Victorian clubs. No...

But homesickness, especially insofar as the Swans were concerned, was driven by cost of living. When it came in, player salaries were nothing like they are now and it was a real factor.

I think this decision is characteristically short sighted by the AFL. I hate GWS as much as anyone but the sooner they fill their list with NSW talent the better for the competition as a whole. The Swans play in Eastern Sydney, not far from Bondi, and cost of living notwithstanding, that's a...

Ideally, if you were going to rationalise it properly, you'd give the NT to the two SA clubs, and obviously WA would have it's own Academies too. Then you'd reduce the TAC Cup to 10 sides aligned with Victorian clubs and make it an Under 19 competition. Each of the 10 clubs would then have a...

They tweaked it last year. You can't wait a couple of years before tweaking it again? I notice they have to a large extent fixed a number of the fixturing issues although it took a pretty brutal effort from Footscray to finally achieve this. Ultimately, there should be no discounts, I agree...

Go home factor occurs only when there's a home to go to that compares favourably with the place you're at which is making you miserable.

OK, well I'll do you the courtesy of explaining why, particularly Swans supporters, are of a particular view not to change things. And it's got very little to do with Heeney and Mills. As it stands, the Swans are a good side. Perhaps even a "destination club". That's great whilst things are...

Oh I get it now. Sorry. I made the mistake of thinking I was debating an adult and not my 5yo son. I am embarrassed because I do this with my son many times a day and I should have recognised the game you were playing. "So you were wrong, Dad, weren't you. There are some times when it's ok to...

It's extraordinary the way a flog like Eddie Maguire can drive such an ignorant belief system.

No. I don't. Because you're segmenting a case that must be considered in its entirety. There are 600 kids at the Swans Academy. None were drafted by the Swans this year. The Academy is popular because it is the Swans Academy. But the result is that the kids who don't "make it" in many cases...

When and how have they done this. You argued that the grass roots strength of Victorian football (or southern) is a result of investment by VFL (or SANFL or WAFL) clubs in those grass roots. Please tell me where this investment is, when it was made, and how it made footy culturally popular.

Right. So what you are arguing is the the current format, which unquestionably works, should be ditched in favour of another format, previously untried, that may or may not work, because of the miniscule advantage it may give the clubs that make the thing work some sort of advantage over other...

Please. Take us back to the early 1900s and show me the "grass roots investments" by the various clubs. Good grief. You just make s**t up.

I am arguing that the Academies represent far more than the development of 3 or 4 drafted players per year.

Precisely. And yet as time goes on, the GC and GWS Academies, if run by GC and GWS, will cause organic local support both for the code and for those clubs. There's no way the AFL can cop the 30 years it took the Swans to develop a foothold in the northern market. The Academies don't just produce...

I guess if you ignore history it's baseless.

The investment isn't just the money. They have sponsors for that. Those sponsors would simply switch which makes your solution a mockery. The investment is the personnel. The teaching. The travelling. The hosting. The organising. And do you know what? Every player introduced via the Academy...

So instead of Sydney organising the sponsors then the AFL do and remove the discount and we're right? My god you live in a delusional world.

Sorry? And that changes what?

You presume that the sporting youth of NSW and Queensland are desirous of playing Australian Rules Football for its own sake. You presume that passion for the game has nothing to do with passion for the club one is following. The southern states are far more mature markets. Kids are culturally...

Here's a radical answer. It won't work.

Because it gives us something to talk about whilst there's SFA else going on.

Or 3) The Swans legitimately managed their list to recruit Franklin which infuriated Mike Fitzpatrick who instructed his CEO to exact retribution.

But we didn't game the system. We traded players out and we traded players in. This is something you continue to fail to get. We traded players out as well. Ok? So if trading is gaming the system, I guess we're guilty. Are Geelong equally guilty?

Do you know, and yes I know I'm opening a can of worms here, that the people at the Swans are still no better informed than we are as to the actual basis of the trade ban? I had a crack at a senior Swans administrator about this at a lunch recently, in the context of being a paying member of...

Well as it turns out, given our posts have all been shifted, it's now a topic for today :) No. The players put on the show. It's them we pay thousands to marvel at. Distribution through grass roots only serves to take away community obligation and fatten the wallets of administrators at lower...