Clubs Struggling to Find New Talent
It staggers me that recruiting officers from AFL Clubs have the opinion that clubs are running out of areas to unearth new talent now let alone in 2012, yet the AFL are going to be AGGRESSIVE in their attempts to expand AFL Football anyway. This is the area that I am most concerned about with the leagues decision to move to an 18 team competition. I certainly do not want to be watching games of AFL Football that is of a lesser standard that it is now! To me it all seems a bit blasé and rushed in order to get ahead of the competition (NRL).
It is not like they need to only get a few players here, we are talking about 80 odd additional players! This is what North Melbourne Recruiting Officer Neville Stibbard had to say.
“I wouldn’t have thought the talent pool is strong enough to make up a couple of extra teams. I can’t see what the new teams are going to get (from the AFL). Would they get the first 10 picks of the draft?”
This is coming from people that should know, they do it for a living. You can see already that the clubs are recognising this and experimenting in the South African and Irish Markets to try and recruit some new talent. Australian Rules Football is the centerpeice of Australian Sport and we don’t want to get into a situation that sees the standard of the game deteriorates.
There is always two sides to the argument and people that would be in favour of this move would certainly be the aspiring AFL Players. I tell you if you are 10-15 years old at the moment and are aspiring to play AFL Football then the moons might be lining up at the right time for you. Get out there and train hard!!
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Your only talking 4 players per club. Plus the areas QLD is growing and you would hope NSW grows. Having more spots means more players that are choosing between two sports are likely to choose AFL. South Africa looks like it will produce some players and I wonder if in the next 5 to 10 years we won’t see more kids come out of the African Refugee communities (sorry if this isn’t said correctly, I am not sure how to word it).
I think there is enough players. I mean when we went from 12 to 14 and then to 16 the game was meant to go down the toilet and it is arguable that the players skills are better then ever!
Molly
Best thing we could do is move teams NOT create new teams…
I think you could be onto something in regards to the lack of talent. If K Bradley and M Johnson are the best Freo could have picked up with their picks, heaven help us.