Just remember Echunga asked the question about more points. The HFL are the ones that awarded the club extra points.

Our small club has had 3 of the last 4 mail medallists in Senior and Junior Colts who, subject to their SANFL journey, will play A-Grade for the Raiders for the next decade. Add them to the nine teenagers who played A-Grade this year, and you can see why we’re confident in the sustainable way we’re building our club.[/quote]

Is this new investing in your juniors. Meadows have been doing this for years have a look at how many mail junior medallists they have had in the last five years. Two juniors played state footie one named all Australian one being apart of the winning u16 state team, not to mention Brady Dawe 3 time premiership player with Norwood. 75% of the senior side who have played junior colts at Meadows.

I really think its time to get serious about the junior teams and not just talk about, like we have been for the last five years and nothing changes. I think we need to go back to concentrating on fielding two junior teams on a Saturday for both divisions. With junior colts and senior colts as the number 1 priority, fill those teams first at least most if not all of the clubs would be able to fill those grades, 4 games together as a club on Saturday is better than everyone scattered everywhere. u/15s go back to u/14 1/2 and leave the 17/s as are. If you have enough kids for a 13/s you nominate a team and you all play each other as in one division lets face it there may be 14 teams at most, because I believe some div 1 clubs are struggling to fill a side as is. If the bigger clubs have two teams they can even them out to be about the same in ability. You can still play these games before junior colts if both clubs that play each other have mini colts or they can play Friday nights as what has been happening in Div 2 from time to time. Furthermore if you have enough numbers to warrant we could re-introduce the u12 grades as discussed early last year by the board. I know their will be knockers which is fine but I cant think of any other solution, capping I believe wont work fact is the parents are the ones driving the kids and for what ever reason don't like to travel to far. All I know is it isn't getting better the way it is and clubs are losing their way trying to fill the three junior grades when there isn't enough kids to go around. I think if the pressure was off to fill a mini colts team most clubs would have two really healthy colts teams. Please don't get on here saying "clubs need to work harder to get kids" I think most clubs are working pretty hard to get kids and then trying to retain their own.