I'll give people a quick in-site to the year i was involved at Coburg. (even if it was only for a little while) It was Jade's first year as coach. His assistance's were a couple of local EFL footballers (both great fellas) and the coach of the Coburg twos (who is now coaching the Coburg seniors) is a school teacher and his assistance's were his mates and more local footballers. Don't get me wrong about local footballers, they all want to help, and that's great BUT most of them don't really know what it takes to be an AFL footballer and all that goes with it.
So my question to you all is, do we want them coaching and DEVOLOPING our kids that don't play in our seniors?
We need a stand alone team asap!!!!!
If we ever want to win another flag we need full time, professional coaches coaching our kids full time. Our young draftees need to be playing together week in week out, learning how our game plan works. Anything else is just a short cut and done for convenience (Coburg)
That same year Geelong and Collingwood had stand alone sides with full time coaches (Collingwood had Gavin Brown and Geelong had Leigh Tudor i think) learning game plans and learning how each other play the game, and both made the finals and have ever since.
Who knows, maybe if we had of had the same resources as some other clubs over those years, some of our young draftees may have made it????