It’s been an interesting 12 months for youth player development in Australian football. At the start of last A-League season the normal hype was being thrown about the National Youth league developing talent and being an important pathway for players to full A-League contracts but how quickly things have changed.
From these platitudes we have now ended up at a point where
the National Youth League has been turned into nothing more than a token
commitment to a future pathway for players, the national Under 17s have been
humiliated at the world cup and the clubs have lost any obligation to promote
players from within.
I guess the first signs on this slippery slope were the
rumblings in March last year that clubs were not happy with the costs of the
competition and the obligations they had to enter the competition even though
it is part of each club's licence to have a youth team.
Next up was towards the end of last season as Melbourne City
started having injury issues player appeared from around the world and around
Australia to replace these players when the City youth team had just won the
National Youth League, once again proving the FFA enforce their own policies
based on a one rule for some policy.
Once the FFA had undermined their own competitions and
authority so much there really was only one direction and that was the
reduction of the national Youth league and the movement of the youth teams to
the state based competitions. This of
course was the final nail in the obligations for the clubs to provide injury
cover from their youth teams.
It is also a very odd choice as the Youth league was also
the method of getting fringe players match fitness during the season and
helping players recover from injury in match conditions. How this will work in the revamped 8 game
plus finals (yes, really) season seems impossible to me.
This brings us on to this morning’s result in Chile. Now while we got a result against Argentina,
they are clearly a side in decline and the fact that we were relying on a New
Zealand win against Paraguay to even get out of the group was a concern. Then while New Zealand were suffering an
unlucky exit to a 4th minute injury time penalty to Brazil we were
surrendering meekly 6-0 to Nigeria.
Now, while I fully expect to see the coaching staff get the
full Ange treatment from Craig Foster as he prattles on about whatever
footballing nation he is currently enamoured with maybe we need to go back to
where we started in this.
In that team were only four players currently with A-League
clubs, three form Melbourne Victory and one from the Central Coast Mariners - interestingly
the only two clubs that seem to provide more than lip service to the concept of
player development. The majority of the
side play for the FFA ‘excellence’ side that finished so far last in the Youth
League last year that some questioned whether they even started.
Meanwhile across the Tasman the Wellington Phoenix supplied
five players to the New Zealand side and the Wellington region supplied a
further four. Of those five, two of
those players are on full first team contracts at the Wellington Phoenix.
Following rejection of applications to enter the NYL in
Australia the Wellington Phoenix owners have looked at how they can develop
players for their own club but also the good of New Zealand. With fulltime School aligned academies in
both Auckland and Wellington prospective players are being recruited as young
as 13. National team Captain Winston
Reid funds 2 players a year to scholarships to these academies – both of whom
are in Chile.
Above the Academies the club has a side in the New Zealand National
Youth League and a team in the New Zealand national domestic competition that
provides a place for players returning from injury, a place for fringe players
to maintain match fitness and more importantly a place for the next generation
to develop.
Aligned to this is a winter team playing in the local
regional competitions. Including the
first team this gives Wellington a five tier commitment to developing players
and is so well run and such a success that two Australian youngsters are likely
to pave the way next season for an increase in recruits from this side of the
Tasman.
Why are our young players going to New Zealand? Because the programme there is better than
the majority of our clubs offer, because they can get an A-League chance there. This year the Phoenix have seven players in
the first team squad who have come through this system as it develops, and
along with the three players they have signed from the Australian State Leagues
have the strongest commitment to player development of any side in the
A-League.
I guess the question out of this is why a club in New
Zealand can achieve this but the clubs in Australia can’t? Certainly the Phoenix have a stable ownership
group and driven people behind the scenes but - despite the FFAs best attempts
- so do many of the other clubs in the A-League.
Maybe it’s just that the Phoenix understand what sustainable means
unlike the decision makers in Oxford Street who make all the right noises but
did nothing to enforce the development rules they established.
Brilliant, keep it coming!
ReplyDeleteWow, what a great blog! Well researched and reasoned.
ReplyDeleteI have thought that one thing that the Phoenix could do is fund scholarships for Australians to come to NZ to go through their academy system. As you said they can provide year round football, and teh ASB Premiership while not up to some of the top state leagues in overall quality is of quite a high level. Auckland city in particular being fairly comparable to an A-League club