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- Oct 17, 2024
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The squad averages have dropped a bit which is nice, and the average minutes for young players has gone up, but the average age of a league starting xis have consistently been 2 years older than in the nsl era and this still hasn't changed
Why? Well a couple of things come to mind
1) The a league era has never had a full home and away national youth league season. A consultancy firm found that the shorter a season the less players in the u20 side end up playing in the nsl/a league. For the longer nsl era seasons you would get 40% of nyl players playing eventually in the nsl compared to 20 percent during the shorter youth seasons
2) not all teams have academies and they are pretty recent
3) too big a step up from npl. The nsl was not only semi pro making a smaller gap with the state leagues, but the stateleagues had the carrot of a mickey mouse promotion relegation scheme meaning they had more incentive to improve. Notice how the ages start to decline in the nsl era a few years after p&r was scrapped.
So we have had less playing positions available due to less teams and more foreigners and our squads have skewed old. It is no surprise the a league era has been poor for youth development
Any other reasons?
The squad averages have dropped a bit which is nice, and the average minutes for young players has gone up, but the average age of a league starting xis have consistently been 2 years older than in the nsl era and this still hasn't changed
Why? Well a couple of things come to mind
1) The a league era has never had a full home and away national youth league season. A consultancy firm found that the shorter a season the less players in the u20 side end up playing in the nsl/a league. For the longer nsl era seasons you would get 40% of nyl players playing eventually in the nsl compared to 20 percent during the shorter youth seasons
2) not all teams have academies and they are pretty recent
3) too big a step up from npl. The nsl was not only semi pro making a smaller gap with the state leagues, but the stateleagues had the carrot of a mickey mouse promotion relegation scheme meaning they had more incentive to improve. Notice how the ages start to decline in the nsl era a few years after p&r was scrapped.
So we have had less playing positions available due to less teams and more foreigners and our squads have skewed old. It is no surprise the a league era has been poor for youth development
Any other reasons?
