Scouts head across the ditch

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Friday, March 13 2009 @ 06:40 pm ACDT
Contributed by: Brett Northey
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Following on from our article on Wednesday that the New Zealand Under 20 Championships have attracted scouts from several AFL clubs, it was reported in Melbourne's The Age today that four clubs will be represented. Those clubs were named as Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney and North Melbourne.

The story (Forget Irish, clubs turn to Kiwis) singles out Hawthorn as particularly keen to establish a recruiting network to take advantage of the international scholarship program. The article, by Jake Niall, also mentions the Kiwi heritage of the Hawks' Trent Croad, Brent Renouf and Shane Savage, and suggests the reigning premier has been in discussions with the NZAFL to assist with the continuing establishment of junior footy.

In many ways New Zealand and PNG have led the way in international footy, with South Africa rising fast and the Gaelic football connection delivering plenty of Irishmen to the AFL. But there has been a sense that NZ may fall behind at junior level, so hopefully a good showing this weekend will help them gain the momentum needed to keep competing with the likes of the Papuans and Africans.

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Scouts head across the ditch

Authored by: tinka13
on Saturday, March 14 2009 @ 12:14 am ACDT

About Time. By the end of 2004 Junior Football in NZ was in a very good state. Unfortunately the AFL in their wisdom turned their back on NZ in preferance of South Africa. Kiwi's are very good at AFL, ESPECIALLY when they get the chance to play against the Aussie's, it means a lot to them. Over the past 5 years, you have seen the NZAFL at senior level do very well and this was mainly because of the good work done during 2000 and 2004 at a junior level. This work at junior level since has been frustrated by the lack of support afforded by the AFL since. Lets hope Hawthorn can really see a good future in the land of the long white cloud. It is only a couple of hours away and Kiwi's have a proud sporting heritage. Don't forget that back in 1901 there were 101 Aussie Rules Teams in NZ and Australian Footy those days was known as Australasian Football. In the past 9 years many young guys who played both Aussie Rules and Rugby in NZ, who could have gone on to play for AFL teams, decided to give up, because of the lack of interest from the AFL and went on to be good ALL BLACK'S, Nick Evans is one who stands out, he was finally invited to try out at Sydney, but the offer was only presented after he was already wanted by Rugby at the age of 23??????

Scouts head across the ditch

Authored by: Christopher P. Adams, Ph.D.
on Saturday, March 14 2009 @ 03:49 am ACDT

I know that there is a lot of support here for the AFL's move into South Africa and I have some understanding of the reasoning. However, you must wonder what the AFL's end game is for South Africa - a team, talent? For NZ, it is so much more obvious that the end game would be to eventually have an AFL team in NZ. A long term plan to develop footy in NZ through school programs, TV, talent development, a senior competition, exhibiton games, would seem as valuable as the type of plan the AFL has for QLD and NSW.

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Scouts head across the ditch

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Saturday, March 14 2009 @ 06:13 pm ACDT

I'd love to see an Auckland based AFL side one day - it seems an obvious thing to target and I'm confident a viable club could be created for similar outlay to that seen in either QLD or NSW.

On the flipside, in terms of bang for your buck, it's easy to see that South Africa provides a lot of opportunity - the Aussie dollar goes much further, and what the AFL has put in is modest but has been done in a way that has got a lot of leverage, with other companies and agencies putting in as well. And whereas if you get solid support in NZ that's about the population size of one of the larger Australian states, South Africa has a population double Australia.

So it does depend on what is trying to be achieved. It'd be nice to think adequate support could be maintained for both. I think it was made clear that the NZ support would not last forever and they needed to find their own revenue streams, and presumably they were unable to to the extent needed to support the types of programs people have been discussing here.

Hopefully this is the start of a rebound. One concern is that the current crop in the under 20s will not come from the good years discussed here (that's just personal speculation), so might not impress the scouts as much as the previous generation could have. Hopefully that will be taken into account when thinking of future potential.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN