How were we under doing it? Can't produce the talent if it's not there or doesn't want to come. You southerners must think, "oh there's kids lining up to play in the northern academies or something".
How many Melbourne/Victorian kids have made their way on to the Melbourne Storm NRL list?
GWS are an anomaly in regards to the academies, in that they were given some regions where AFL is the number one and first choice sport. It speaks volume about the lack of foresight the AFL had in giving GWS these regions, and it also speaks volumes about how underdeveloped these regions were, when GWS started producing more talent out of these areas than the AFL had seen before.
As is often repeated by QLD'ers, you Victorians have no idea what the sporting landscape is like up here.
Yep - no idea mostly.The kids that show ability ARE lining up to get into the Academies but numbers have been limited and still will be even though (UIGM )the Lions are to double the numbers this year.
Still,the talent has to be there and so do the sheer numbers playing the game and the standard of play - Both of my grandsons who live in Brisbane just didn't have the development path that kids who live in the States where footy reigns supreme have had.
They started in the Under Eights with the local QAFL club Juniors - no primary school footy available (but there was Rugby League and Soccer) and at High School on Wednesdays it was half a game on half a field with not much over half a team while two other schools played on the other half of the oval.
The older boy gave school footy away after Grade 10 and the youngerr fella would not play footy for the school given his brother's experience and would rather go ice skating - he tells me he has been persuaded to play for the school this year as well as the Under Sixteens for his club - he is now particularly keen on Basketball,a sport that he only started through a mate he met at High School and plays that for the school and a Club.
So it is a credit to the Queensland Academies (and the NSW ones for that matter) to have produced the players that have been drafted by various AFL Clubs so far and pleasing to hear about intentions of the Lions to ramp up the numbers and the training at their Academy.