Quote Originally Posted by sapdad View Post
I love this idea and hate the fact that many posters on here can see it but the people in charge cant.My son is playing for one of the NPL teams that will be somewhere in the middle this year.It probably means he will cop some floggings and dish out some floggings.I would much rather he be in a 2nd tier of teams that play similar level and earn their way up each year.I would also hope that all NL1 clubs are made to run the JDL program from 9's,even if it is just one team per age,in order to bring through a good group of kids every year that hopefully remain loyal and then work their way up the youth pyramid.While ever teams are grabbing community kids and expecting them to go up against JDL kids in 13's the imbalance will always be there.And im not talking about wins and losses either,im talking about continued development of more kids from an earlier age instead of asking Magic/Olympic/Maitland to just have 4 JDL teams and let everyone else pick their castoffs at the end.NNSW has to work with every club under their umbrella in order to get more kids playing and encouraging development.And I know JDL isnt the answer to everything but it is the best product we have at the moment and implementing that to a wider audience is better than blaming clubs at the back end when they cant field teams because their players leave for so called greener pastures.
Indeed, it would be better for all players to play against similar competition every week rather than some weeks they win or lose 10-0 and thus learn nothing and some weeks where it is a battle.

Northern needs to stop listening to the clubs and just do it, I think part of the problem is some clubs don't want the change for reasons that aren't about developing players and more about ego and titles.

If you want to develop players and get a larger pool, you won't get that at the moment. The best players in the best team have their development hindered if only 12 of their 24 matches are competitive and the other 12 are too easy. Same with less skilled players, they won't be able to develop if half of their games the other team is far too good for them.