2024 Premier Youth Leagues

[Taffy]

That being a crappy decision doesn't make the even worse one of a 16-18 game season less shitty though!!!

Will be even less for the NL1 18s teams next year. Adamstown, Charlestown, Belswans, all teams that finished in the bottom 4 will go up, and imagine how that is going to be. Even worse if Adamstown come down and it is West Wallsend (majority of the 18s turned 18 this year), Kahibah, or Stags that go up.

This leaves 7 teams in the competition for U18s in NL1, so 16 games maximum because there won't be any cup games, heaps of Byes, unless Wallsend and Dudley manage to find 18s and it will only get worse as clubs who get promoted may not want to or be unable to get an U18s side. If a current team gets relegated and have to lose their 18s they may end up dropping Youth too particularly if they are unable to go straight up as they struggle to attract players who don't want to play for a club that has no U18s, so will be even less games for Div 2 and for NL1 18s.

But why would Northern care about their competitions and growing and keeping them healthy, they just want to help NPL clubs make money money off parents so they can over pay players.

We have just seen anecdotal discussion how relegation ripped apart the successful teams from Weston, who had their best poached away once the drop became clear...clear wide reaching consequences of this pro/rel methodology (good teams punished through club averages, now a subtle manipulation of excluding 18s from PYLB, etc)

I would argue that this forces the clubs to care about the full program and put an effort in to develop all teams, got a good 15s, well focus on improving all your other teams as well. Of course this won't mean jack shit if 18s get taken out of PYL, a club could be in NPL, and doesn't matter if their PYL teams are in Div 2 and League C, they will be able to attract and recruit decent players into the U18s because their 1st grade is doing well, while an NPL club that just got relegated may see clubs now losing a whole lot of U18s that they did develop.

Worse losing a bunch of kids you've worked with for 4 years at 16 years old because of how 1st grade went.