A lot gets written and said about Parramatta's junior development without very much ever happening.
We make minor cosmetic changes, picking at the seams of what I see as essenitally a fundamentally flawed system. So over the years as I've had more and more exposure to how junior Rugby League works, I've started putting together a bunch of ideas on the topic that now represents a complete re-invention of what our junior development pathways might look like. Given the interest in the blog yesterday about junior development, I figured it might be time to float the central component of that framework.
As many of you would know I have a boy who plays Div 1 Rugby League at Wenty, and I've coached or been a trainer within the system for the last seven years. For those of you who don't get this kind of visibility as to how junior footy operates, I think it's worth painting a picture of some of the issues faced within the district when it comes to junior footy and those early pathways.
It's pretty commonly known that there are a handful of strong junior clubs - Wentworthville, Hills, Cabramatta and more recently Rouse Hill have joined that group. Then in random age groups you might be lucky to get a second tier club that lucks upon a particular good batch of boys - in our age group, for example, Guildford has a talented bunch of kids.
However, the general rule of thumb is that in any age group you tend to average just three to four competitive teams. The strutural reason behind this is basically your pool of Elite footballers in any age group is about 50 kids. And the gap between the elite footballers and those who are just playing for fun is massive.
This represents a significant core problem underpinning Division One football within the district, which is really where your development pathway starts (Penrith has much the same issue where St Mary's, Brothers and St Claire are a step above everyone else).
The club's current next step is to start pulling kids out of the club system and feeding them into talent development squads at about 14 years to prepare them for Harold Matthews, and then at that point they'll identify their top 15 to 20 or so player in each age group who essentialy enter the Parramatta junior system.
There are a number of problems with this. At this age, kids are getting selected when they are still growing. Those who are still growing and developing are at a signficant disadvantage when this door of opportunity presents its self. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that any kids who misses out on those early Harold Matthews teams tends to get picked off by weaker districts and ends up playing for Wests Tigers, Manly, etc. There are any number of examples here in the NRL, including Dave Klemmer, Paul Gallen, Moses Suli, etc.
What you have here is a significant point of failure at a time when you are essentially laying the foundation for the next decade of your junior development pathway. The problems surrounding that point of failure is exacerbated by what comes before it - essentially a non-managed, non-competitive elite football division and the illogical timing of when you are actually having to make these decisions.
And so I introduce to you the Western Sydney Elite Junior Rugby League Competition.
This plan involves collaborating with Penrith to take the best three to four teams out of their district competitions. You might nominate elite teams, but my preference within our district would be to have three teams - Parramatta South (Cabra, Mounties, Guildford, etc), Parramatta Central (Wentworthville, Titans, Toonie, etc), Parramatta North (Hills, Rouse Hill, Kellyville, etc).
I would introduce these teams at mod-level. Ideally, you would add one to two teams from South-Western Sydney as well into the competition.
There would be strict rules related to poaching between districts, to ensure none of the districts were scared off by this prospect.
What you would get is competitive football every week for all your elite juniors. For me, this is one of the key issues as to why we don't transition our good 15 year olds to be great 20 year olds. They're not being tested week in, week-out. They make it throug the early rep-levels simply because they are bigger or faster and so there is no necessity to develop their skill base more broadly. Even when they get into Harold Matthews, Parramatta and Penrith teams tend to be dominant and regularly notch up big wins against the weaker teams.
The coaches for these three Parramatta teams would be selected by the district on an interview basis (ideally from within the age group's district teams). These coaches would receive intensive training on skills development and would be required to demonstrate each year that they are successfully developing their kids in terms of skills and athletic progress, not just winning games.
I would opt out of the Harold Matthews competition. This would mean you now have a pool of 50 - 60 kids who are being expertly coached under club guidelines, who can be tested and monitored (giving you data to make more informed decisions in the future) and you're now holding unto them until at least 17 years of age. My preference would be to opt out SG Ball too. The longer you put off that "point of failure" towards an age where you have a much better idea of what the physical end-product is going to be, the better. I might also stress that under this scenario, it's far easier to evaluate what kids have going on between the ears. Right now, we're making decisions at that Harold Matthews point of failure with literally ZERO consideration to how smart a kid is, what their work ethic is like, etc. If they have had six years within this elite program, your club-appointed coaches are going to pass on really usable feedback as to what each child's mental strength is, which is where I see is massive void in the selection process as it stands today because attitude and smarts is a key criteria in evaluating evental chances of NRL success.
You also minimise the superiority complex, a lot of these kids get as soon as they are selected for the "Parramatta Eels". When they're essentially playing a higher-level of club football until their 18, it's going to be a lot easier to keep them level-headed and working hard through the ages where those behavioural patterns are likely to be set-up for life.
There are significant benefits of this plan to general Rugby League participation as well. When you remove these elite kids, who are just abnormally powerful you make the rest of the competition safer and more enjoyable for all participants. Suddenly you can have a 10 team Parramatta Division One competition that is far more generally competitive and safer. You give greater opportunity for small clubs to grow because talented kids don't have to go to a "big club" to maximise their chance of success.
This is a brave, bold plan because it would involve fundamentally re-structuring junior rugby league and not a lot of people have that kind of appetite for that level of change. But after decades of underperforming when it comes to junior development, we have to realise that tinkering at the edges of a fundamentally flawed system is not going to significantly change the end-output. This system would give both Penrith and Parramatta a significant competitive advantage over every other Sydney team.
Post-script: My thinking on how kids get selected for the three elite teams would be to run a month-long pre-season competition. Kids register and train with a regular junior club for two-months and then basically after Easter the elite kids get selected and move on, and then the district can re-grade all the remaining teams far more fairly than they currently do. You'd work through this with all of the junior clubs as to how you'd best handle this, though.
Comments
It is not an abandonment of elite competition it is just a different elite competition. So instead of playing Harold Matts you continue to play in the Western Sydney competition for at least two more years. Lets say we opt back in at SG Ball even then you start culling at 17 instead of 15 which is a big difference.
The NRL Big Picture does not help us. We need to look for ways to create competitve advantage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QgX8KNVUuU
Two more names for you Josh Carr and Josh Curran.can't keep em all I guess .
So I fundamentally disagree with you on the first point Poppa because the NRL's primary objective is diametrically opposed to what shoule be our objective
Our objective is to win Premierships. Their objective is to create an even competition. We need to work against the NRL in this regard to try and provide points of competitive advantage.
All kids care about is having the best shot at playing Rugby League - if our districts are very clear that our development pathway is through the Western Sydney Elite Competition, then that is what they will target.
Another problem is the rep seasons I think are only 9 rounds? Then they're supposed to go back to their clubs and play football and a lot of them just aren't interested once they have played rep footy going to back to their clubs. Or else they displace kids who have been playing while they are away.
I did - and I thought it was aligned with this - ie the parent body needs to take more control of the development...
I like your post, and you have valid point, i was coaching a few years back at the titans.
I won Division 2 Grand Final with Under 14's next year was in Under 15's Division 1. which is normal procedure.
2 players and bigger forwards decided to go to Marconi, i Lost the Teams best & fairest, and coaches player becuase his parents moved over seas. and lost my next best kid.
Some how we won Under 14's on the back of those players, but when it came to 15's i understand automatically move to division 1, but we had a completely different team and we were forced up.
We won 1 game the whole season, we made it to the semi finals of Under 15 Division 1B. 8 teams in the comp split up into 2 at season end. Players have to learn to win and lose for sure, but we were out of our depth playing vs Wenty 1, Hills 1, Cabra 1. We were not a division 1 team
I totlly agree something needs to be done to change our junior System. Maybe we should do something like the movie Mighty Ducks. Make kids play in the districts depending on where they live.
I have been out of Juniour League for a few years, but heading back this year to look around and get back into it.
Hey Paul, thanks for the input. Yep, this happens time and time again.
The best kids always want to go, to the big clubs because they think it improves their chances of going to the next level so its very hard for smaller clubs to compete. The grading system seldom works because they make decisions about putting clubs up or down against last years results not what the team is this year.
The problem is when kids are getting belted every week, they are not just losing, they are getting physically hurt. Who wants to turn up for a sport where you lose every week, and you get hurt doing it. I'd like to see the stats of what the drop-out rates are of teams that say lose 80 per cent of their games.
Again, if you take the Div 1 kids out of the normal grade system then there is no reason for kids to move clubs because every player has equal opportunity to making one of the Elite squads.
I remember the round 1 game vs WENTY 1 who won division 1 in Under 14's the year before.
We got pumped, i think we even had the Mercy rule come in, not only did we get pumped i had 4 players injured and basically ended the game with 12 players on the field. oh and by the next year, probobaly only 4/5 kids showed up the year after for Under 16's.
If they really want to develop players, they should be doing more, and not just developing the top 50 possible Harold Mathews team.
WHAT IF .... They focus on developing all Division 1 Players. in Under 13's and 14's for the 2 year period and then choose the Harold MAtts team from them, the other kids would of imporved and they would of got a better look at all the kids in those divisions.
Interesting concept, that raises a lot of cause and effect issues. With numbers playing rugby league dwindling, what would happen to the suburban teams and the surburban competitions , when you take 3 teams out of each Parra and Penrith competition. These competitions could radically decline, firstly with lesser numbers and then lesser quality football being played. Taking that a step further the so called elite kids would no longer be seen in the local competitions, this can have an impact on other juniors playing the sport. Ive seen it time and time again when good players get taken out of their suburban team their school friends and mates also pull out for varying reasons, this would need to be studied in detail to ensure our numbers don't dwindle further.
Secondly, perhaps the way we actually keep the kids signed to the eels once they have this training and enhanced skill set would need to be looked into. It's a hard pill to swallow watching years of hard work put into a junior only to see him poached by another club at critical junctions prior to playing first grade. A very good policy would be needed to go hand in hand with your new elite competition pathway to ensure the hard work gets rewarded with players actually staying and playing first grade with the Eels. Maybe it's time for the NRL to give further cap relief or cap incentives to grow your own local junior.
The appointments of coaches and selectors for these elite juniors would need to be heavily monitored with an air cap in some form from the first grade coaching Merry go round. There's nothing worse then the First grade coach, dictating under the guise of his staff appointments appointing the coaches and managers etc for elite teams to then have the first grade coach sacked, the junior coaches then relocate with the first grade coach and the whole system gets thrown into turmoil, experience gets lost, kids again get poached to other clubs to stay with the certain coach etc.
If it's all about winning first grade comps for Parra then these things also need addressing.
Big Job there Phill, however bad things happen unless good people do something.
Go Parra !!!
Thanks for the reply Blue Eel. SO on your first note, it's not a lot different to how it works now. My experience is Div 1 players are seldom playing with their "mates". Rather you team mates become your mates. Div 1 players are so rare that you seldome end up with kids from the same school playing together anyway. It probably happens more in the lower divisions but from what I've seen broadly with football, your footy team really becomes a secondary friendship group (conincidentally which is a massive benefit of playing team sports according to child psychology consensus).
Last year the NSW Rugby League brought in a transfer rule which pretty much limits kids from crossing districts (and pretty much teams as well if your a Div 1 player) anyhow so the starting point is there anyway. But yeh, you'd absolutely put in place a no poaching rule. I think there is a benefit too that when they are not playing Harold Matts you're not actually putting them in the shop window to all those other clubs, ether.
As I said, I truly think the elite kids hurt participation numbers. I see it so often parents wanting to push their kids to play at the highest level that they're just not ready for. I think you need to start running the District competitions on purely a participation basis. Don't worry about elite pathways and all that for the 90 per cent of kids who play without any expectation of making rep teams or the like, because League is just a bloody fun game to play.
I'd want to take those coaches out of the District teams. If you have coaches teaching kids at Under Sixes thinking you know what I want to show that my players have these great skills so that when it gets to Under 11s or whenever you decide to bring this in, I'm going to have a chance of getting one of the elite teams, you then pass that shared objective all the way down to the lowest age groups without any real management input needed.
This is an interesting idea in that the Parramatta district would be working with the Penrith district rather than against them as we tend to do now. Given their strength we could certainly learn a lot from them. It would also help to achieve better demarcations between the 2 districts. Not sure how Penrith would see this, and would they be the dominant partner?
I don't know that we should leave the Harold Matthews Cup, but certainly this idea would provide a better competition and pool of young top quality players to keep an eye on. No doubt however that Penrith would also be seeing a lot more of these kids and could entice them to move.
The other thing to consider is that it is at this level where the game itself is shaped. If we are pulling out all the bigger, more developed kids to go to the next level, does that mean that the Division 1 is the place for the less developed kids to learn better skills? What type of game does the NRL want to have in future? Are we going to continue to see it as a game of giants, or do we want to go back at some stage to a time where smaller players can excel? Whatever plans the NRL has for the game in 10 years time, Parra need to be building for that now. If the club doesn't know the answer to that question, they should be demanding answers from the NRL, as this is fundamental to the development of players to play the game in 10 years time. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say the NRL has not even considered where it wants the game in even 5 years time.
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