West London launching under-16s in 2008 London junior league

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West London launching under-16s in 2008 London junior league

Authored by: Michael Christiansen
on Friday, November 30 2007 @ 09:11 am ACDT

This junior development in the UK must be seen as an exciting move. Considering the way the English DragonSlayers defeated the Danish juniors last year - with the apparent backgrounds including Rugby giving them a physicality advantage.
Currently AFL clubs seem only focused on Ireland for potential talent. Let's hope that within 10 years there will be a couple of rookies come out from the 'mother country'; and perhaps more representative competition will boost the international juniors in that neck of the wood and help build the profile of the Danish juniors. A Danish rookie is what's really needed to bring Princess Mary on board!!

Any chance of an overview of International Juniors - as this really is the 'promise' for a sustainable and worthwhile future for our game in these markets rather than just a curiousity.

West London launching under-16s in 2008 London junior league

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Friday, November 30 2007 @ 02:30 pm ACDT

I think you've probably hit on an important point regarding the physicality of the British juniors via in some cases Rugby exposure. We've seen the New Zealanders play a strong brand of footy for the same reasons. On the flipside the Danes were probably caught out a little bit, with contact sports less common there. The US juniors recently also found the Canadians played a more physical brand than them.

Hopefully we'll be able to do a bit of a review of all the junior programs towards the end of the year - fast approaching! A quick summary I'd suggest would be PNG out in front, particularly through the AFL Queensland pathway (more good news on that shortly), with South Africa and NZ next, then Canada, Denmark, Britain and Indonesia, then Tonga, Samoa, Sweden, China and the US. Apologies to any left off, and there are smaller programs doing their bit in Japan, Singapore, Solomons, several SE Asian countries and others I've forgotten off the top of my head. But all these programs have different growth curves - some of the lower ones may shoot to the top bracket within a year or two.

There's no doubt the last 3 years has seen much more junior development as the sport gets older players (expats and locals) having kids or settling down in one spot, plus emphasis on juniors by various funding sources like the AFL, AusAID, etc.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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