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Healy slams "dumbest change to AFL in 30 years"
Gerard Healy • May 7th, 2025 8:37 am
In footy, there's often things we disagree on, and some things are a matter of opinion, but not as many as the AFL would have you believe.
The decision not to suspend Willie Rioli, or even fine him was so inconsistent with the AFL standard procedure that you can only shake your head with disbelief, bewilderment and for me disappointment.
Flipping the bird gets an immediate and hurried response with a financial impediment but threatening someone's personal safety gets another warning.
How bizarre. It's so comedic. It's so inexplicably dumb.
It rocks the foundations of the leadership and authority of AFL House all the way to the top to Richard Goyder and his commission.
At the same time, we have a game investigation ongoing as to the qualifications for NGAs (Next Generation Academies), as clubs are literally going back to great, great, great, great grandparents to find a loophole. Four and five generations.
This is without question one of the dumbest, most ill-considered changes to the recruitment pathways we've seen in 30 years.
If Chairman Richard Goyder can sit there and rubber stamp this nonsense, then it's even more clearly time for him to pack up and go.
Surely, Richard, you don't want dismantling of the draft, one of the pillars of the game, as part of your legacy.
The NGA mechanism will only double up on human and physical infrastructure and ground availability and kill off more of the integrity of the draft to farcical levels.
We'd all like a totally uncompromised draft that some have pushed for, but most want father and sons, and most accept that Sydney, and to a lesser extent Brisbane and the Gold Coast, simply haven't got the development, both human and physical infrastructure, of the southern states.
Rather than NGAs, a much more efficient and better result would be achieved by expanding the targeting of new Australian populations through AusKick, using the already established pathways in the AFL states.
That will benefit all juniors, including NGAs, if sufficient full-time staff are upskilled and facilities upgraded.
Leave the majority of AFL clubs to develop professional players, not football kindergartens.
As I've said before, the pathways are all there in the southern states already. They just need greater funding and greater imagination, seeing them as development assets.
Pay them properly and expand their responsibilities.
The WAFL, the SANFL and the Coates League clubs should all be funded to take on the total role of development, including the targets of an NGA as they've done for decades, but in better facilities with broader targets.
It needs vision and it needs cash. And most importantly, it preserves the national draft.
Do AFL clubs really want to deal with hundreds of school kids to hopefully find a couple of players if you accept that AusKick is the obvious beginning for catchment?
No, and it's a farce to think they will. They'll cherry-pick as they've done so far.
The NGAs will fundamentally undermine one of the great pillars of equalisation that we have relied upon for years, the draft.
And it begs the question how this nonsense has been ticked off already by the AFL Commission.
Perhaps it's because they are so blinded by social issues, specifically DEI - diversity, equality, inclusion, that they can't separate what's good for the game versus what's good for their social conscience score.
Of course, the best results shouldn't be one or the other. It should be a tick in both boxes, which is so easily achieved by focusing on what we already have in place - the talent pathway is in existence.
Rather than reinventing and doubling up on pathways simply to appease squeaky wheels of various clubs around the country and DEI objectives that can be done by targeting AusKick.
After having totally botched Western Sydney over the last decade, where millions of dollars have been torched and little has been achieved, if anything, is the Commission now going to continue this development train wreck in our own heartlands?
Peter V’landys has schooled our leadership on development in Sydney, extracting millions of government dollars to build stadia and centres of league excellence in Western Sydney and Sydney in general.
His fortress, Rugby League's heartland, while the Commission has at best crossed their fingers and hoped for a better result west of Pennant Hills where the game is not even on the populist list, rated 28th of all sports for participation in the West a few years ago.
The league's push into Perth recently announced, backed by the state government and 600 million dollars from the federal government for the Papua New Guinea (team) compares extremely favourably to the tenuous government commitment we have to the Tasmanian expansion.
Already, there's been a serious setback on the preferred training base that I doubt few on the commission even know about.
One of our game's greatest assets is the draft that has for decades underpinned equality in a national game, where inequality is rife.
Inequality in the numbers of players produced on a state-by-state basis, a distinctly unequal go home factor and cost of living tax, that impacts on players and coaches alike, some coaches living in caravans. an uneven exposure to the MCG and an incredibly different travel impost on a number of teams, particularly the Dockers, Eagles and Giants.
Is the Commission seriously going to allow an unravelling of the draft? One of the greatest cornerstones the game has that smooths these inequities more than anything else, a mechanism that Rugby League looks upon so enviously to solve a relatively new issue that has an obvious other solution.
A recommendation from Rob Auld about NGAs will be handed down in August, and I suspect we'll do nothing but clarify a few qualification issues.
What it should say is that Isaac Kako, Mac Andrew, Isaac Quaynor, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and many others are proof enough that our present pathways already produce the targeted players through already established infrastructure, if they are introduced early enough.
And if more diverse players are introduced, more will come through.
These players aren't a product of NGAs, they were simply accessed that way for obvious political purposes - at the time, a gross mistake of a previous administration.
It should say, the report, if you want to produce more players, then target and attract them to AusKick or special early age programs in distant areas under the AusKick banner or have AFL specially targeted squads.
This will require professional help to assist volunteers, the great unsung heroes of a game that never get recognized.
It should say, that in an effort to unite, to be diverse in our population of players, it's hypocritical to give preferential specialists development priority based on race through the clubs, because that's what NGA's do.
That's what it should say, but I very much doubt it. It will carp on about DEI and opportunity and importance of the clubs, which is totally flawed, as the game is a big enough draw card in southern states, unlike northern academies.
It will be sent up to the commission for approval. But if Richard Goyder and the commission can't see through it, see how totally flawed the NGA system is, see how destructive it is to the draft, then we have the wrong commission. And the renewal process of the game's leadership can't come quickly enough, beginning at the top.
The view of the clubs is that a president or former president has to be the next chairman. But of those capable, there's not a long list to choose from. Someone like Jeff Browne, if he was available, which is doubtful, would be ideal as an agent of change as he was at Collingwood.
He's the best candidate, but probably won't want to do it, which makes him even more ideal.
Hear Gerard's full editorial below
