Junior Development Needs To Be Accountable

I was doing some back reading on the FFV website and came across the section on the V>Elite program.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the program, the FFV initiated a elite junior program late last year for 11-14 year olds. The idea behind the program was to take the top junior talent across the state and provide them with specialist training over the summer months (December to April). For this inaugural year 75 players were accepted into the program (Boys and Girls).

The program overall is a fantastic initiative by the FFV. But what caught my interest however was a little stat buried in the selection criteria for the program. One of the initial key entry criteria was to be able to be to successfully complete 50 juggles left, 50 juggles right, 50 juggles head. The FFV had determined this measure to be world’s best practice after reviewing programs across Europe. However as only 0.3% of trailists were able to successfully complete the measure the FFV had to downgrade the selection criteria to 50 successful juggles in at least one area.

To put that figure in perspective that means only 3 in every 1,000 trailists were successfully able to complete the original ‘World Best Practice’ measure. Not exactly a flattering statistic.

What I would really like to know is how many of the 75 V>Elite participants can now successfully complete this measure. What I am referring to of course is where are the measures to judge how successful the program has been. I would like to believe that the FFV have monitored the improvement of the V>Elite players throughout the program and it would be useful to see published a set of metrics around the program to judge how successful it has been.

Also hidden among the Future Trails information is this

“…In a bid to lift the standard of footballers across the state, helpful hints and guidelines will be available soon to aid coaches and players to further develop potential and prepare for the next year’s trials…“

My understanding was that originally the FFV intended to roll out an online skills database and tracking program that would allow young players the ability to track their improvement online. With such a poor performance in the juggling measure it is a pity that such a initiative hasn’t come to fruition.

Over the last year I have seen countless articles that talk about improving the technical skills of our juniors. Small Sided Games was a huge step in this direction and coach education seems to be getting a lot of attention at the moment. However until we hold the junior clubs accountable for the skills of the players they are delivering change will be slow or non-existent.

The FFV (and FFA) need to put in place measures that will ensure that coaches and clubs are focussed on the right things. All Juniors should be assessed at the beginning of the season with a national skills test and re-assessed again at the end. These assessments should go into a national database and club ratings publish (just as school ratings are). Maybe then clubs will be accountable for the skills that they are teaching our kids.

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