Quote Originally Posted by sammydog View Post
As far as I am aware, and correct me if I am wrong, not all clubs can run a SAP program. It was only open to NPL and NL1 clubs for the Boys and the girls are still Newcastle, Hunter and NNSW.

Football Victoria opened the program up to all clubs to apply for a licence, I am not sure of other confederations. This to me seems like a better system.

For a lot of smaller clubs, this program has a big drain on players. You develop them up and now at the age of 9 the good players move on. That makes development of players beyond this age hard as you are struggling to hold teams together.



For us, ground use fees don't go up if we play more games or the season is expanded. Only difference in cost may be the electricity bill for running the lights. Perhaps if you are paying coaches there is a cost to be incurred, but at the moment I cant see many mini-roos coaches being paid.

Extending a mini-roos season doesn't need to cost money. Getting coaches educated does.

If we want to improve coaching and get more coaches accredited, follow the Football Victoria model. Open SAP up but have strict guidelines and make clubs apply again each year to weed out the non-compliant ones.

If SAP was open to all clubs, you would have clubs with aspirations actually able to increase their coaching education and attract (or at very least retain) their best kids. In this scenario mini-roos clubs could have a two tiered system within their clubs. Kids that want the extra move into SAP, and those that don't stay in community.

You could argue clubs should already be up-skilling coaches, and I think you will find a lot are, but if you aren't a SAP program no matter how good your coaches are, the kids won't stay.

For discussion, below is details on the victorian system.
Excellent post.
Cheers for the feedback (am i right in that you are part of running a club?).

Again, the SAP thing is an ever evolving beast. the clubs freely admit it. Hopefully they take on the Victorian changes, it can only be a good thing.
Has your club been slugged extra in your lighting costs yet? One of the massive increases over the past few seasons for inner city clubs has been a huge increase in the cost of maintaining and running their lights. we def have heard about clubs cutting back on training nights to save cash rather than bump up regos.

Also, yes, the coaching will be a massive problem. its ok for well intentioned mums and dads to run the kids around on a weeknight. and to be fair there are some legit good coaches teaching the kids out there. but yeah, if you want that to improve, and to be consistent across the board, coaches need to be trained. it costs money, and if you multiply that out and add it to the extra time needed to be invested by 'parents' wanting to coach, then does that deter more coaches than it encourages?

but yeah, the costs of grounds and coaches would have to come back to the rego. agree FFA/NNSW 'should' make it easier, but cmon, are they gonna go handing money back to the game?

The SAP thing has been interesting to watch unfold. some clubs can field multiple quality teams, some clubs didnt even trial under 10's, they just kept their kids around from last year and poached any good ones they saw along the way.
(you wont be shocked to hear that those are the clubs that have a reputation for not really developing their youth anyway).

id love to eventually see clubs rewarded at NPL level for 'developing' those kids, and with the absolute top tier of those ids starting to get moved into the Emerging Jets program from about age 12 (i think), the evidence of whether it works is only a few short years away.