Hafey blasts footy's decline

[mightytiges]

13 June 2004   
Sunday Herald Sun
Ian Haberfield

FOOTBALL legend Tom Hafey has launched a scathing attack on the AFL, accusing it of deserting the game at the grassroots level.

Mr Hafey told the State Government's parliamentary inquiry into country football that AFL House was a "yuppie castle" and said the league should sack players caught taking drugs.

The fitness fanatic said struggling country clubs would continue to fold because not enough was done to help them.

The four-time premiership-winning coach said the AFL concentrated too much on the elite at the expense of grassroots football.

"I do 55,000 to 60,000km a year in my car and it hurts me when I see football struggling in a lot of areas," he said.

"The unfortunate part about it is that a lot of the people who run the football clubs have very little business sense.

"Most of them are truck drivers or they work on farms and they have to try to raise a big dollar.

"The AFL, the Government and the council give them nothing and, as you know, they are trying to raise a dollar.

"When you think of all the clubs that have disappeared, do you know that only last year a Sunday paper (the Sunday Herald Sun) said that 100 teams had disappeared in the last 20 years?"

Mr Hafey said that the AFL's under-18 competition was for the elite at the expense of country clubs.

"The AFL is saying that is where it is putting its money in, but that is not really country football," he said.

"They are more or less doing it for the real elite."

Mr Hafey said the AFL should consider reintroducing country zones.

"We used to have our players go out to the local footy clubs," he said.

"When country zoning was finished that was the end of all that."

Mr Hafey said he had great difficulty getting clubs, players and companies to sponsor his work with country schools.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire was the exception and arranged a 12-month sponsorship for him, he said.

"Eddie was the only one who would return a call," he said.

"I can only sing Eddie's praises."

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,9828208%255E19742,00.html

[mightytiges]

IMO one of the things that has hurt country footy is the introduction of the U18's comp. The top kids need to play for a TAC Cup side to be drafted by the AFL meaning they have to leave their respective local country teams which drains the quality and numbers available for the local comps. Add to that from memory you must be playing in a AFL recognised competition (VFL, SANFL, TAC Cup, etc) to be eligible to be drafted. This would discount a number of local clubs.

The other reason IMO is the lack of opportunites (jobwise etc) in their local area for country kids leaving school. Many need to make their way to Melbourne to go to Uni etc. So the footy-age population back home is affected.   

Personally I'm against the idea of zones. Mostly because Richmond was given one of the worst zones when they existed last time. I partly blame that for the mess we ended up in during the early-mid 80's as we didn't have enough A-grade young recruits coming through to replace our ageing champions and so the Club went on an insane buying spree with money we didn't have, buying duds then buying more duds to replace the ones that failed.