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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Top 7 Quotes and Cliches from the 2007 Draftees
A Draft couldn’t go by without the plethora of quotes and clichés that have now become customary for the AFL Draftees each year. Now that all drafts are out of the way and all the AFL Lists are in I thought I would recap on a few of those quotes and clichés that we have heard from this years batch of youngsters. It must be all the media training that they do at draft camps, TAC Cup etc that teach them what to say to the media after they are drafted because we tend to hear the same things every year.
Here are my top 7 from this year:
- “I would have happy to go anywhere”
- “It’s definitely a dream come true. I’ve been working towards it my whole life, so I’m pretty rapt to be here,”
- “Now that I’ve been picked up, the hard work starts here,”
- “I’m really excited … I can’t wait to get down there and get into it.”
- “The first day when they stood us up in front of everyone, that’s probably the most daunting it’s been; looking around and seeing all the faces that you’ve seen on TV and have grown up watching. But you get to know them and talk to them and they’re just normal blokes.”
- “It was really good. I loved being out there kicking the footy with the boys, and I really enjoyed it,”
- “I am just stoked and my feet haven’t really touched the ground yet.”
Have you heard any more from this years group or other classic ones from years gone by? Post a comment and let me know.
