TOPIC:

Great article written by Mark Duffield in today’s The Game section of The West. Highlights the obvious but puts the spotlight on the inept football commission who have been complicit in a lopsided competition that has barely seen the top four clubs miss out on finals in the past 20 years.If the WAFC think they are a bunch of elites that can just sit on their hands and do nothing they can think again. The drums are beating. 

SS can we have this conversation here. You say zones have to be allocated evenly based on numbers and it’s up to the clubs to get the best out of their zone. It’s not as simple as that and you know it. It comes down to demographics of the historical background of families that live in particular zones.

Some clubs are rich with families that have 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th generation kids who’s father, uncles, grandad, great grandad and so on all played football growing up. As opposed to zones heavily populated with immigrants who’s parents are new arrivals and never touched a football in their life.

Coincidentally, an Asian fella and his grandson set next to me during the league grand final. He lives in Belmont, his grandson lives in Bayswater. He said he knows nothing about the game and it was his grandson who is teaching him.

I was delighted to see and hear that first hand. But that is the difference between some zones and others where kids who’s family grew up playing football are virtually born with football in their DNA and grow up with a football as soon as they can walk.

And if you want to talk numbers, our country zone is probably the smallest by population and spread out all over the place.

East Freo is long known to be a wonderful breeding ground of AFL players. I don't think anyone can deny it. But having 2 sons grow up and play footy in the East Freo zone I can put hand on heart and say that during all those years from Auskick to U17s when I was coaching teams or helping out at training or on game day, I never once saw an EF player, coach or official or anyone remotely connected to EFFC come along and say "Hi...I'm from East Freo and I'm here to see how things are going" or take part in a training session or a skills workshop or anything at all. So for all East Freo's development success, they sure don/t do a whole lot to push it along. So I agree with you DD, it's not about numbers, it's about demographics and historical family and friends engagement in Aussie rules. In relation to Duffield's article,  it was very one sided and didn't take into account the culture at Subi. It was very lazy journalism to point the finger at finances and not dig deeper into what drives success. Melbourne is one of the richer club's in the AFL and they've only just got a sniff after 50 odd years so cash is only part of the equation.

I hear what you say DD but it has to start somewhere and it starts with numbers. We need to get rid of Peel and redistribute their rich junior zones, that would allow some of the junior wealth that Souths and EF have always had to be pushed your way. WP, Subi and EP share the north west, north and near north east areas, Swans the valley and hills and north east, so some of that needs to be redistributed. Subi have a mix of solid coastal zones but also have areas like Balga, Mirrabooka which are heavy with immigrants. particularly of African decent, same for EP who have done a good job to get a number of those lads into their system. these areas have no family history of footy and are low socioeconomic areas. So which suburbs do you think Perth should get?

Will everyone stop banging on about (we have to get rid of Peel). Not going to happen. Too much money has gone into it.

We don't need less teams to change the pecking order - we need another team.

That West/North West metro region is what keeps the pecking order in place.

Duffield's article (another good piece on The WAFL by The West) nailed it. It's Subi, South, WP and Claremont.

Another team in Joondalup will see the talent spread in this West/North West area become similar to the talent spread that Perth, EP and Swans have.

Will West Perth like it - Hell no. They will probably rush to try and change their name to Joondalup - but stuff them.

This new club will struggle for 20 years like a lot do and to help them be competitive they could align with WC just as Peel align with Freo. The traditional 8 clubs are not tarnished here.

People have said that West Coast wont want to have their players going up to Joondalup when they train at the same ground as Perth - garbage. Fremantle trained at the same ground as South for years whilst still sending their players to Mandurah to play for Peel.

These AFL clubs have got plenty of people to help and plenty of people with a lot of spare time.

Glad to see this article in the paper, but sadly it will be ignored,

I was looking at some of stats just today over the decades , and the gap between the top club and bottom is bigger than at any time since WWII.

At no time until the last 20 years had any team achieved a win percentage of over 70% percent , yet Subi has achieved that in the last two decades.

No other club has done it, South and Claremont are in the 60s, this was quite common win ratio for 70 years for the better teams but never more, for the previous 70 years.

Then there are teams drifting from the 40 and into the 30% wins...

Its like the economy and the gap between rich and poor getting bigger and bigger, and the middle slowly being squeezed.

The points cap will catch up with them,not as easy to manipulate as the salary cap,what does STT think???on air STT ...........do you read me??

Duffields story is ridiculous. Can you imagine any competition trying to bring a successful team down because they are too good? Instead of other teams working out how to get better?
Crazy shit. 
Has anyone missed the fact that Subi didn’t play in the finals last year? And were beaten during this year by 4 teams, 2 of them outside the top 5?
When Subi were getting smashed year after year I never once thought to myself “gee, I wish the other teams weren’t as good”. Get a grip 
 

Actually yes Frothy get Yes I can its exactly what the AFL does every single year, the successful clubs get punished in a way via the deaft.

And you cearly didnt read the article as he mentions last year.

Get a grip mate, the WAFL is a joke.

royallucky wrote:

The points cap will catch up with them,not as easy to manipulate as the salary cap,what does STT think???on air STT ...........do you read me??

Whatever their points cap is now should be further reduced so that they won't be able to recruit a 12 point Interstate player and/or a returning/delisted WAFL player from another club.  That would force them to recruit from their zones which they say is flourishing.