by Jetters » Thu Oct 06, 2016 8:04 pm
As someone mentioned, my frustration is not so much that scholarship players are 0 pointers, but that they recruit the best talent by effectively paying massive amounts to them/their families. Would seem outrageous (and rightfully so) for a junior football club to pay junior players, but this is normal in the private school world.
It's annoying that the big private schools have access to so many juniors/students and have to do very little to attract them to their clubs vs a community club (they also have to do way less to run their clubs often, not having to worry about ovals, facilities etc which are taken care of by the school), but that's just reality.
We do have a foot in both school and junior camps, but we absolutely have genuine connections with both groups. If you think that's unfair, we would love to have the rules as North East clubs and have unlimited junior numbers, have multiple teams per grade, more junior rego fees, which would help us sustain an U18s side and therefore a greater pool of senior players.
The argument whether the socialist route is the right.... Glenunga and CLG now have thriving junior programs, which is absolutely, most significantly due to this 1 team per age rule. If this was not the case Unley, Goodwood and Mitcham would all have multiple sides in each grade and those two clubs would still be struggling big time. BUT, has it reduced total numbers of participation? Maybe. Which is better 3 clubs with 2 teams each or 5 clubs with 1 team and more even competition? I think the answer is probably somewhere between relaxing the SANFL socialist rules and tightening the rules in the North East.
