Venues being considered include Geelong's GMHBA Stadium, Carlton's Ikon Park and even Adelaide Oval, where the South Australian government is seeking a deal involving Port Adelaide in the All – Stars. The last Indigenous All Stars clash took place in Leederville in 2015, where West Coast won by eight points against captain Shaun Burgoyne's side.
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The All-Stars, coached by Michael O'Loughlin, previously toured Ireland in an international rules series in an event that was only supported by some AFL chiefs. That team suffered heavy defeats. This golden era of players included Adam Goodes, Lance Franklin, Burgoyne and Eddie Betts.
A joint venture between the AFL and the NRL was pushed during the Indigenous players' camp in Broome in 2017, and again in 2019 by O'Loughlin and former AFL employees Chris Johnson and Mathew Stokes, along with Johnathan Thurston, Nathan Merritt and Johnathan Thurston of rugby league. Justin Hodges.
It was cautiously backed by former AFL boss Gillon McLachlan, but ultimately rejected by both codes.
The AFL has made the All-Stars proposal to all 18 clubs and has been buoyed by relatively strong levels of support. But Collingwood, whose Norm Smith Medalist Bobby Hill is said to be at the top of the All-Stars wish list, has already expressed some misgivings.
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The AFL's head of inclusion and social policy Tanya Hosch said: “It's a challenge to get players to release. But players are constantly telling us they want to and that includes the biggest names and players more experienced
“I don't think it's insurmountable. We know communities love it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people love to see their heroes on a team. And they're happy to give back to communities to inspire young people getting into the game.
“There's always a concern about a player going down or wanting to protect him and I completely understand that, but I really hope we can do that.
“This is my eighth season in the AFL and there hasn't been an All Stars game in my time.”
Kane confirmed that a series of recommendations to reform the Next Generation academies has been sitting on the AFL Commission since last August. The recommendations included a proposal to remove the NGA's draft talent restrictions, which currently mean clubs cannot sign their own academy products before the No. 40 and return it anywhere in selection no.
Laura Kane, the AFL's head of football.Credit: Simon Schluter
Recommendations presented to the commission last year in a report written by Xavier Moloney and Vandenbergh also proposed that clubs be forced to commit for more than a year to category B rookies and to correct radical funding cuts to the academies of the next generation.
While the AFL's northern academies for Sydney, Greater Western Sydney, the Brisbane Lions and the Gold Coast each receive annual AFL funding of about $600,000 respectively, the NGAs, designed to attract Indigenous and multicultural athletes with no Australian legal background, they each receive a tenth of that amount. Their funding was cut from $120,000 to $60,000 per club during the pandemic.
Fremantle, which invests $1 million a year in its Kimberley region, has lost two academy players – Jesse Motlop (Carlton) and, more recently, Mitch Edwards (Geelong) – since the AFL changed the rules in 2020.
Jamarra Ugle-Hagan was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 national draft.Credit: Getty
However, the proposed academy reforms, according to the league's football boss, would be part of a wider restructuring that would include a rectified industry approach to developing youth talent.
“Aboriginal players have made a huge contribution to our game, but there has been a disconnect from the pathway to the elite,” Kane said. “It's going to take a long time. It can't be fixed overnight, but we're going to fix it.”
Then-general manager-elect Andrew Dillon admitted to this headline last July that the competition may have overreacted by tightening the Next Generation academy rules in 2020 after the Western Bulldogs took their star recruit from Jamarra Ugle-Hagan Academy to the No. 1 pick in the national draft. .
As of 2020, 87 Indigenous footballers were playing for AFL clubs. Since then, the numbers have continued to decline annually with just 71 players on the roster. These numbers have also been reflected at national under-18 and under-16 levels with indigenous coaching and other leadership roles in football's paths few and far between. State leagues remain unwilling or disincentive to hire indigenous personnel.
Kane accepted that the decision to tighten the academy's rules had been a contributing factor to the drop in Indigenous numbers, along with cost of living issues and the fallout from the COVID pandemic.
“Long-standing connections across the roads were lost,” he said, “…and financial constraints challenged the family support that drives so many junior footballers from remote areas there from training and competitions”.
Clarke, who moved from Richmond to North Melbourne this year, remains the only full-time assistant coach in the men's competition despite head office affirmative action that has seen a share of Clarke's salary, and any other indigenous or female coach, placed outside. the soft football cap.
Giants boss Dave Matthews has pushed the AFL for western Sydney to be exempt from the bidding system, pointing to the indigenous population of 50,000 in western Sydney, where talented athletes have traditionally chosen the NRL.
Although now in the AFL's recent past, the treatment of Adam Goodes, Collingwood's cultural problems as outlined in the do it better The report, Taylor Walker's racist slur and the historic allegations leveled at Hawthorn by former First Nations players and their families have been identified as potential red flags for the AFL by some indigenous leaders.
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