am Bays wrote:drebin wrote: I will wait with eager anticipation to North's response as they have been on for a long tiime to resist changes at the behest of the AFL that will erode our comp and North have at least got the balls to publically comment via their website on many issues.
Dreb I have only quoted this bit as basically I am not against the rest of your post or more correctly don't have the information to counter it if I did, I find your comment that North have for a long time wanted to resist changes at the behest of the AFL a tad ironic. Weren't North one of the leading proponents of the AFL led change to an U/18s and reduced 16s from our previous junior set up?? To me that was and has been a far more dangerous change to our leagues future development than these current changes.
The longer you can keep kids in your club set up the more chance you have of developing them.
Agreed re your point for us pushing the change re the 17's / 19's to u18's however the main push by North was the financial factor of having both grades and the drain and expectation we put on our feeder zones to supply players when for example the Colleges were taking back their players mid-season.
Also if the young talent hadn't been discovered before they hit the 19's, be that via the 17's (or now 18's) or in the League and Ressies, is there any chance of them developing further or being discovered in the 19's? There is always the exception to the rule however it is unlikely that most 19's even go onto SANFL league Football let alone being drafted. It was also to bring us into line re the rest of Australia to make our juniors more competitive at that elite Commonwaelth Bank U18's National Championship level.
Our club has always supported and fostered junior development and realises the best talent will be drafted (as does your club) but that system did need streamlining but now these further changes make it hard for clubs now to top up what they lose in developing players with less money to recruit and now with stupid import restrictions to keep our comp strong.