Folau, Michael not eligible for IC11

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Folau, Michael not eligible for IC11

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Thursday, June 23 2011 @ 01:19 pm ACST

Yes I think Troy is correct in his reading of the rules. And yes I think Moran was eligible however we contacted AFL Great Britain (or maybe it was called the BARFL then) and they said they were only interested in guys who had played in the UK. So eligible - yes, available - probably not, required - no.

This all continues to be an area that has clear rules but the ability to vary them or make exceptions, and which will become increasingly difficult as the IC evolves. As more juniors get involved and AFL talent ID improves, we could easily see a 12 year old play locally for 1 year, then get offered a scholarship to play in Australia and if they go well get it renewed each year. Suddenly you have a gun 17 year old who by the above criteria would not be eligible for their country, whereas I believe they should be able to play. NZ's young ruckman Kurt Heatherly is now Australian-based thanks to Hawthorn. If he'd arrived a year or so earlier I suspect he would technically become ineligible for NZ.

As a parochial South Australian I think of the irony that this international impact all comes from "the Wayne Carey rule". For those that don't know, South Australia beat Victoria in the State-of-Origin match in 1992. SA had the likes of Carey, Modra and Kernahan in the forward line. Carey was well on his way to becoming arguably the greatest centre-half-forward of all time.

The eligibility rule read: "A player (is) to be tied to the state or territory where he was first registered at age 15". For Carey that was SA. The AFL then changed the rule in 1993 to: "A player (is) to be tied to the state or territory where he resided for the majority of the time between ages 10 and 17." That neatly shifted him to NSW. That rule has remained (a recent example was in the All-Stars vs Victoria match in 2008 when Adam Goodes starred for Victoria, after initally thinking he'd be playing for his home state of SA). And now we see it applied internationally. Not saying it is wrong - whatever formula is used there will be players that will end up misplaced because of it.

The other issue is that excellent players are already starting to move to semi-pro and pro Australian teams and some of them will not play in IC11. So the standard has a bit of a ceiling on it, therefore the chances of it growing into a well attended pinnacle event is somewhat limited. These things will come to a head over the next 5 to 20 years, depending on how quickly the sport grows.

---
Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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