News Zones Possibly Coming Back

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Disagree - you'd have to live in an area like Ararat to see the massive impact a club with a vested interest in the area had on the zone. Once zones were abolished Collingwood cut the area dead. I don't blame them. The AFL runs clinics but they send up no name players from various clubs . There isn't engagement or buy in. Country footy is dying. 20 years ago this town had an association of 10 teams plus a team playing in the Wimmera league. Now the association is gone. One team plays in the Wimmera League and another - a loose amalgam of the old association plays in the Minenara league.

Imagine how much extra money would need to be outlaid and the results would be predictable. Collingwood to help finance other clubs to run their own zone programs and academies. In any case you can't cover the whole map, just economically impossible.
 

golazo

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Instead of zones, we should keep the draft, but allow all clubs to recruit a maximum of 2-3 players into the club (from anywhere in Australia) from the age of 13 to train up and be excluded from the draft. So for example, Hine could spot a young talent at 14, butter up his parents and put him in our academy. Say he's the best talent in the country, he's excluded from the draft because we saw him first/wanted him more and have him in our academy. Make the maximum age to put someone in the academy at 16.5 years, so it stops teams like Carlton paying parents millions after seeing who the media rates as the best talent in the TAC cup. This rewards scouts who put in the really hard yards and have a good eye for talent

That way, the draft stays intact and it benefits those clubs who seem to be perennial mid-ladder finishers but have good scouting/development. Allows them a chance at recruiting/developing elite players without having to tank to a last place finish
 

didaksrightfoot

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When trying to get 12 and 14 Years old does not mean they would come guns

Get enough of them and it will.
Get access to 50 kids with pedigree/potential every year, and train them all through their high school years (often at the expense of the rest of their development as an adolescent) and you will get enough elites in the process.
 

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didaksrightfoot

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Sep 12, 2013
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Instead of zones, we should keep the draft, but allow all clubs to recruit a maximum of 2-3 players into the club (from anywhere in Australia) from the age of 13 to train up and be excluded from the draft. So for example, Hine could spot a young talent at 14, butter up his parents and put him in our academy. Say he's the best talent in the country, he's excluded from the draft because we saw him first/wanted him more and have him in our academy. Make the maximum age to put someone in the academy at 16.5 years, so it stops teams like Carlton paying parents millions after seeing who the media rates as the best talent in the TAC cup. This rewards scouts who put in the really hard yards and have a good eye for talent

That way, the draft stays intact and it benefits those clubs who seem to be perennial mid-ladder finishers but have good scouting/development. Allows them a chance at recruiting/developing elite players without having to tank to a last place finish

But that just creates a system of haves and have nots, and worse than anything, it is doing it by exploiting 13/14 year olds.

The European football academy systems are fraught with problems, and that is why they keep getting more and more regulations placed on them... for every top level player, there's hundreds of kids who have given up a normal development for this chance at stardom, often having left their homes and families to do so, and end up with no skills or training to help them succeed in the real world... and at least that's in environment where there's thousands of lower league positions available to at least earn a living wage - that doesn't really exist in Australia.
 

didaksrightfoot

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I like it, since we don't really have a college ball type system, I'd love to how this would work. Get involvement all the way through from TAC Cup, VFL and AFL and gain more fans and a stronger linkage to players.

If we can get mass crowds to TAC and VFL through knowledge that we're 80% going to draft their best player than go for it.

But there are better ways to create a "college-type" development system without effecting equalisation.

I would much rather the AFL actually go the other way, push the draft age back a couple of years, and have people play in the VFL/SaNFL/WAFL/NEAFL for a couple of years before being drafted. Gives clubs (particularly those with the top draft picks) a better opportunity to scout and predict how good someone will be (a positive for equalisation), and will get more attraction into those lower leagues.
 
the only way zoning would work would be in NSW or QLD with all clubs given areas but its just shifting the problem and creating an enormous headache.

i think this is a sop to Ed who respondedto northern academies by talking about our own. Better just to oppose free kick to Swans/Lions
 

Trickster

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I read 'kill for Collingwood' and it talks on how we got dudded by the zone we got allocated in the 1960s/70s when that came in. I'm not sure of the selection process.

Our zone was in the southwest and the argument was that relative to Carlton's which was Bendigo, they had a bigger population and therefore produced a greater number of players whereas our zone produced players but because of the population, we didn't produce enough. This may have cost us a premiership or 2.
 

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