TOPIC:

Anyone else read the section in the West on Bob Dewars comments RE: his advertisement regarding junior football development?

Its a pretty strong statement for someone to use their own money to advertise in a newspaper their opinion on how they see the current state of the junior development system in this state.

One of Bobs key criticisms is that coaching accreditation schemes for junior coaches were nearly all classroom based meaning that development coaches were themselves not being shown how to teach kids basic footy skills i.e. how to hold a ball, how to kick etc.

Bob goes on to comment that he was “astounded by the poor standard of training and coaching” being delivered to players in particular 14-16 development teams.

Be interested to see anyone who currently has kids in development age groups who have similar opinions?

I quite often like watching the 16s games after the league game and quite often the difference between the best and worst players is astounding. Earlier in the year Perth 16s got smashed (I think by the WP side) by a couple of hundred points. It was very evident that some boys were completely out of their league on both sides.

Now whether this is down to our district as a whole or the individual club coaches in the suburbs Bobs view is this is the real reason our draft prospects as a whole in WA are drying up!

I've always been amazed how many blokes that get to afl level and have a poor opposite foot.

My view on this is that whilst I think he has a point and a fairly solid one some clubs and some junior coaches do try to coach for the future but parents and officials want wins and that is where the issue is, the competing priorities.

I was part of the 14's and 15's carnival and the difference between clubs and processes is enormous. You can clearly see where clubs chose players that might not be skilful but are robust enough to intimidate rather than beat players by skill. Experience shows that just cos a kid is big and dominates at this level and perhaps into 16's they soon come back to the pack when other are more skilful, more able to deliver and have a structured plan on how to play the game.

I believe that the process of development needs to start at district level and then progress through to clubs. As clubs struggle more and more to have enough 15's, 16's and 17's teams they need to be playing in a district comp that goes over the surrounding clubs.

I've been involved as a coach at some level with the same core group of kids for nine years from Auskick right through to 17s this year in the Melville area and can say we very much focused on skills in the early years then more so on processes and structures later on....16s and 17s mainly. These kids developed very well with the result being that a significant number are now in the EF and SF colts programmes. The one thing that I wasn't a big fan of was that all kids had to have at least 50% game time each week otherwise the team could be fined and/or lose points. This was ok in the early years so that all players had an opportunity to develop but as they got older it really made it tough when you had 27 kids on the team sheet.

BC wrote: I've been involved as a coach at some level with the same core group of kids for nine years from Auskick right through to 17s this year in the Melville area and can say we very much focused on skills in the early years then more so on processes and structures later on....16s and 17s mainly. These kids developed very well with the result being that a significant number are now in the EF and SF colts programmes. The one thing that I wasn't a big fan of was that all kids had to have at least 50% game time each week otherwise the team could be fined and/or lose points. This was ok in the early years so that all players had an opportunity to develop but as they got older it really made it tough when you had 27 kids on the team sheet.

That is where the district process comes in, the 5 or 6 from each team that need to developed at a higher level play in that comp and the ones who take longer play in the level below.

The lower level boys get more of a chance to get a kick have a game whilst the ones who are better at that time play against equally skilled boys.

unfortunately Grump we had to combine the sides in the EF district with SF and Peel just to get enough teams to form a club comp. That started last year (2014) where we had enough for two divisions then onto this year where we dropped down to one division with just eight teams...so having an elite competition wasn't an option.

Bob was spot om. WAFC have there head in the sand