bulldogproud wrote:Dutchy wrote:Centrals u18's haven't played finals in the last 10 years, surely that has to be a huge part of the solution
True, a fair proportion of your club's success at junior level depends upon zoning. It is no coincidence that the clubs in the lowest socio-economic areas (South and Central) have the lowest rate of success over the past 10 years. With families struggling financially, more pressure is put on teenagers to gain part-time employment to assist the family's income. This restricts their ability to play sport at any serious level.
South's fortunes began to improve when, in the 2014 rezoning, they gained considerable parts of Glenelg's old territory.
The loss of parts of Salisbury, Parafield and Para Hills from the Central District zone in this and previous rezonings really hit Central. Central were an extremely successful club in underage football prior to this. In fact, Central won 12 premierships at underage level between 1966 and 2004. Since this time, there has also been a large increase in the proportion of teenagers spending significant hours in part-time work. This, coupled with the loss of theses areas, has greatly impacted upon Central's success in underage football.
Cheers
Yeah agree about our junior program being a major part of our issue. I think of the premiership decade and you roll names off the tongue that were from our zones primarily the Barossa but also the northern burbs like:
Thomas ,Dutschke, Slade, McKenzie, Healy, O'Hara, Currie, Sibenaler, Cochrane x 2, Steinberner, Graham, Havelberg, Sansbury , Switala, Nash,Giles,Hurn, McCabe, Symes, Obst, Westoff x 2, Dew. You could then roll off another 15-20 names who were locals that played in multiple reserves grandfinals.
Having that core really gave us the ability to pin point interstate recruits, we also were able to identify one to two players a year from opposition clubs that would suit our needs such as Boyd, Slattery, Jenner.
I think the other big factor is we have lost the ability to find players suitable employment. Not sure why or how this happened but this seems to be a common theme in players we have lost to other clubs......otherwise its just an excuse being rolled out but I believe it to be somewhat true. I can completely understand it may be hard for our club to find work but I would love to know what the club have done in this space to try and improve. From the outside it appears they haven't done much at all......this could be wrong but it is how it appears especially when considering a club like the Eagles have partnered with an employment agency.
Interestingly out of the list of players I named I believe 7 of them were school teachers, did we have a connection within the uni's or schools we now don't have. I know a lot of those teachers were at a combination of Craigmore High, Fremont High and St Thomas More High.