All teams should be prevented from matching bids inside the top 20. It’s the perfect balance and a win for everyone involved.
Brisbane and GC will benefit from the academies more than Sydney has/will, the comp up there is getting better every season (shows the academies are working) and QLD produces more elite sports people per capita than most other states/counties/provinces around the world.
I hope clubs see this as a sign to let him come to the bombers. It would be such a shame if he was lost to the game if he gets drafted to another club who doesn’t understand his story like Collingwood and hated it.
That would be awesome.
Do we have a realistic idea where he might go?
He’s obviously got some genuine AFL attributes, but with the form line not being super solid, and maybe some queries on how/where he fits in, I find him hard to place.
Could go 20, could be a rookie.
Do we know how he tested @ the draft camp?
All I could find was Munkara came equal 8th in the Running Vertical Jump (83cm), with Szybkowski, Ginbey and Cowan.
Draft central write up had him 25-50
IMO, It’s like 24 - cat B rookie
Cat B Rookie is like other clubs letting him come to us.
It really depends on how many picks teams want to take. If this draft is wound up by 50ish, then if he gets to 40 then he’s a pretty good chance to get to Cat B. There can easily be others that clubs rate, and there’s some chance that clubs haven’t put massive amounts of work I to him after he barely played… Fingers crossed that he gets through …
Twomey reiterated today in Road to the Draft podcast that he suspects Munkara will fall to Essendon outside the top 40.
My guess is that that clubs will know that he desperately wants to get to us and won’t want to take the risk on him, but will hold us accountable and make a bid after 40 so we commit to using a senior list spot (instead of getting him as a Cat B rookie).
The AFL, with their usual knee jerking incompetence, have really let the NGA kids down.
By changing the rules bringing the draft matching availability below 40, Clubs will quickly come to the belief that the are better off investing valuable funding into other areas.
Previously Clubs had massive incentive to invest money & personal into the development of these kids in the hope of finding the next JUH.
Now why would they bother when they will be gone before 40?
AFL was just appeasing to Eddie and evening up with Northern academies, now eddie has gone they are getting watered down.
AFl are all about the TV rights, and they need QLD and NSW teams firing or else they are worried they will switch off. They never really cared about the NGA academies.
AFL could just like invest money into NTFL footy, Tassie footy and Qld footy but expects the clubs to foot the bill.
They changed it to 40 because clubs weren’t bothering.
If Clubs could see the value of getting these kids up and firing, $ and support would quickly follow.
JUH was a massive opportunity for the AFL to push the NGA programs; but, they just reacted to one or two blowhards.
Had JUH been a Pies NGA would the rule have changed? Eddie would have been silent.
It’d be great in theory if that was happening. But mostly the academies were just laying claim to kids that would have made it into footy anyway rather than funding the development of kids in any meaningful way. They were basically becoming glorified “I have dibs” programs.
The system hasnt been improved by the AFLs dillution of the rules, sure, they could have done better to incentivise clubs to invest in areas that will bolster talent getting into the AFL that wouldn’t have otherwise made it. But mostly its just the guys like Cameron Mackenzie for the Saints. A Brighton Grammar boy who played for the Sandy Dragons and Vic Metro, he was always going to acheive an AFL list and St Kilda have contributed the bare minimal to his development other than calling dibs lol
really… you think, Changing it to from 0 to 20 to 40 would make them bother more.
Of course not, but when the majority of funding was going to guys already in the elite pathways who already had access to all of the advantages, then it wasn’t really meeting the intended goals anyway.
If they wanted to encourage opportunities for people from outside pathways then increasing the number of players who can be added to Rookie B list from the NGAs, and then make sure that these kids are coming from outside the already defined elite pathways.
Yet they reduced to cat B list from 3 to 2 …
Because AFL…
Because clubs like North complained they couldnt fund the extra $$$ for development of these players.
So then you have clubs like Geelong exploiting the list and other clubs missing out.
AFL needs to increase
