Hoops

U/14 Boys Club Championships

Having seen Forestville and Sturt there is no comparison between the teams, Sturt are head and shoulders above in terms of skill and structure!

I agree Right On - the teams will change over years as will the dominant players!

I also agree with Annon that if Gosford or DV were on other side of the draw they may have made top 4. You cant guage the team for the final games as a lot has happened by that time. Had either team met Sandy or Sturt earlier the scores may have been very different!

I agree about the fact that boys are starting to get to know each other. I am glad to hear your boys were actually able to build friendships. I think this should be an aspect encouraged by the organizers at this year level through a series of well structured activities. There again, some clubs probably might not like this as they place a lot of emphasis on this tournament as it is the only one National at Club level.

And I forgot to say well done Sturt for pushing Melb. They did a great job and i am sure they will play each other again setting up a good rivalry

I thought Gosford were a very strong team. They only went down to Hills by 4 points with both teams playing very aggresively.

I saw the DV vs Melb game. This was probably one of the highest quality games I have seen at U/14 level.

Both teams played physically and so well DV threw everything at Melbourne. If they played like that every game they should/would have been in the final.

Hi Opti
I looked at the stats from both tournaments and the Melbourne team is exactly the same.

Difference to me was that they seemed to go 8-9 deep. Their stats dont have anyone standing out as scorers with 6 or 7 playres ranging from 6-10 point per game. That is always going to be hard to guard.

They shot well inside and out. Great three point shooter in the team and the big guys are solid.

Give Sturt their credit they played an awesome semi final - they shot the lights outs from the 3 point line. Rather than Melbourne being below par, I think teams just played their very best against Melbourne knowing they had nothing to loose. All credit to them!

Also hard to say Hills were below par. Melbourne chocked them with their defence. They just went at them every time and blocked out every shot, not giving any second shot opportunities. I dont know Geelong would have performed any better, until Hills they were not tested, and Melbourne beat them only 2 weeks ago in the Vic Final by 27. Assume Melbourne played the same type of aggressive defence.

The only Melbourne kids who get anything subsidised are those whose parents coach. This is an incentive used by many clubs to attract coaches! That is where the real poaching occurs. Get good coaches and kids follow!

I think you will find that lots of other club will offer reduced fees to sibblings of coaches

If the kids do not yet play rep-ball, then they can be approached by anyone and this is not poaching. It is when the kid is already playing rep-ball and is approached by another rep-ball club to move across to them - now that is poaching.

In some respects I agree with some of Gaze's comments, however given his direct involvement with the Melbourne Tigers junior's, his view is ultimately very much biased.

The Melbourne Tigers representative program has more to lose that any other based on the new VJBL rules as the Tigers are the only rep-ball club in Vic (as far as I am aware) that does not run their own domestic junior comeptition. Therefore they will have greater difficulty in poaching, ahem, 'attracting' players from other associations because they will no longer be able to place any more than 2 new players in the one team in any given season.

Opti, yes two kids came from another club, not because they were poached but because their older brother and sister played for Tigers and the parents were waiting until 14 before commiting to the extra travel. They were not poached and according to one of the parents certainly do not get any dispensation. There was one other kid who came but not sure why! That is it from the year before! The bulk of the 14.1 and 2 team are home grown!

Considering you are so well informed, how about digging into what happened the previous year as well? I think that you will find that at least 2 of the existing 4 were poached then! Making this an overall change of 5 new kids to the club since their U12 Div1 team. That to me sounds like a major change over 2 years leading to the U14 Nationals and justifies the perception of all the other clubs that have not had much change at all!

It is tough to stop any team that goes 10 deep and where most of the team can play 3 or 4 key roles. I think they have some pretty good shooters from the games I saw and their bigs are quite good. As you say who knows in the long term if they will be able to compete inside like they do at the moment.

The coaching must be quite good to see this level of depth and skill!

Short term, as I do not feel this kid will grow much more, They do have a super versatile player, but overall they have super depth! 10 excellent players that can play 4 out of 5 roles each! They do not have any weakness in the U14 current national landscape. If you had to send them overseas to an international event they could possibly do with a very strong centre.

What makes thems so strong. Some of the threads say they rely on one player. The games I have seen they look pretty balanced. Gaurds are a bit up and down - dont like to pass the ball around, prefer to do it themselves

Not surprising at all, they are in a league of their own! Nobody can challenge them for top spot.

Anyway back to the champs! Melbourne 1 beat Geelong by 29 points in the Vic 14 Grand Final.

Isaac, he is U14 now and U16 next season I believe

LOL,
I wouldn't call some of them "boys", I think you find puberty has hit many if not all. Anyone who is 13 and over 6'3" has probably well and truly entered puberty.

144, if you read my post of 21:34 5 Sep 10, as well as all my previous posts, it is all clearly explained. Marty's son is a good player but not an amazing one! Certainly one of the 2 I was referring to in that post. But Forestville gap had already closed immensely with Sturt at the State Champs, where in a semi Sturt only defeated them by approx 4 - 6 points. And that was without Marty's son. So as you can see he doesn't really make a huge difference. The other thing that is obvious to me in seeing them play is that they are the only other U14 team that is playing with a decent defensive and offensive team structure. Also all the kids in that group seem to have developed well and they are playing as a team. Having said this I have to say hat looking at the kids right now, they seem to also have a slight overall physical development advantage. As you can appreciate, these are 13yo boys, and most of the Sturt ones are all boys, but in Forestville there are some clear sign of manhood starting to show. This will equilize in the following years but right now these unsynchronized steps will favour one or the other team. In fact, talking about Marty's son, 6 of the Sturt boys played against him in the State SAPSASA last year in Newcastle when he was playing with ACT. If you watch the photos of that event just 1 year ago, you will not recognize him! He has had a big growth step.

We were thinking about moving from Vic to SA and Sturt was one of the clubs we were going to look at. From Vic point of view they are clearly the club which develops the best juniors~!

586, I would not go there! That is not a good observation, we all know why she was there in the first place!!! :-)))

As I said previously, Sturt is in my opinion without doubt the best overall Club in SA. In particular in the early stages of the development of a player. However there will always be circumstances where other clubs will fit individuals better than Sturt. In my opinion by not allowing a club to have multiple teams in Div 1 they are actually allowing badly run and managed clubs to survive which probably should be dead or have died. In fact, these same badly run club would probably succeed more if there was a promotion relegation system, as they would be forced to lift their act and run themselves better in order to avoid death. So what to me seem to be a system that should not allow "super clubs" in reality is simply a system that allows basketball mediocrity!

Yes, exactly my point! Div3 girls at Sturt that have become Div1 at South and have certainly improved more there than they would have if they had stayed Div3 at Sturt! These were first year girls U16 2 years ago who where promoted to Div1 as first year and have played 2 years of Div1 U16. Certainly a positive move for those girls.

Fully agree with you 538! I think you have nailed it on the head there on all fronts! And if we look at the U14 boys Div 1 comp, it is without any question that the best Coach/Club this year in terms of pure development has been Paul Arnott's Eagles team. If you look at the gap Sturt had at the beginning of summer season with this group and the gap that they have now it is clear that Paul has done a wonderful job! As far as your last comment goes, you say something else very important. This comp should be all about developing kids and not clubs! And in an ideal world Clubs should interact and cooperate with each other a lot more in an effort to maximize the potential of all the kids in SA! A Div1 competition like the one we have now does not help any kids, Sturt included! Playing a couple of tournament a year, though very good, is certainly not enough as too discontinuous.

How about the current U16 Girls squad of South? Does this ring any bells or do I have to name the 5 girls at least I know of??? There again you might have to give us your email address as I cannot name them in this Forum!

I think history shows many more than 1 or 2 .... however I do agree that the concept of not allowing Clubs to fill more than one Div 1 team is very wrong. Having said this I really feel that where Sturt is far in front at a coaching level is only in the Div 1 - 2 groups, and playing at Div 2 level does not offer the best opportunity either! This is quite a hard one to master and it needs to be carefully analyzed for each individual circumstances. I also feel that the importance of coaching "the fundamentals of the game" is really concentrated in the U10 to U14 brackets, unless you have a late starter, from U18 onwards it is much more up to the kids and the time and effort they will dedicate to their sport. Talent and skills alone, as well as good coaching,will not take anyone anywhere if they are not prepared to do the hard work. And if kids are prepared to do the hard work they will succeed also at other clubs. Of course not any club!

As always, my $0.02

Yep, lots of depth! As I said earlier, with the boys growing and changing into adults size will start playing a much bigger role and technical ability alone will not be enough! This will even out things a bit amongst clubs. Also the way the district comp is structured will not allow Sturt to retain all these kids as they are not able to play them all in Div1. This will cause kids to move to other clubs which in turn will also change the landscape once again.

I cant believe the misinformation about the Melb Team.

The whole team from 2 years ago is not now the Melb 2 team, in fact 3 of the starting 5 from 2 years ago are still the main players of the 14.1 team today.

When Sturt only lost to them by a few points, they had one or two kids on the bench unable to play including one of their main players who broke his arm or leg that weekend.

4 others in the Melb 1 team were playing for Melb last year

Lets not let facts get in the way of anything!

Hi Isaac and thank you for your feedback. It was my first post on the forum and I did not read the fine print! My fault. Thanks again for having removed the name, as I could not do this myself.

All good now, Opti

I disagree Anonymous. The core group is all there. The kids that have been so successful in the last 5 years are all there! There is a big group that includes a few very strong PG in the first years too, who have actually won the Classic last year in U12. With this in mind, the 2 PGs lost will be easily replaced in years to come. If you look at some of the new inclusions, they have actually been part of the Sturt squad all along, and one can only wonder! why these kids weren't brought up earlier!! There is really only 1 new kid to Sturt and if you remove the usual hard working 5 or 6 that have been there since day 1 five years ago, there wouldn't be much of a team. As I said for Melbourne earlier, the big group has allowed this group to keep developing well at training over the past 5 years.

I agree on not taking the Mavs and Eagles lightly. I like both teams and coaches but as I already mentioned I really believe they rely heavily on fewer kids. Mavs in particular, remove 1 kid and they would come last! As far as Eagles, Paul has done a real great job. They seem to be the only other team that has been developed well overall and this is making them a greater threat into the future. I see them starting to play like Sturt, a real team game with a solid defense and this is a welcome addition to the Comp. They have also added this year 2 new players and this "coincidentally" are their best 2 players by far. So definitely a big change in that team! Again remove those 2 and there will be no Eagles but Pigeons at best! As far as Sturt, remove any 2 you like, they will not do as well, but they will still be a top 10 team at the Nationals.

As far as Knox, you can always rely on the fact that they will bring a well drilled and competitive site that plays a very aggressive game of ball. With the simple sheer number of kids they have you can never discount them!

Cheers

Hi BeeJay, assuming that there are no major contenders in the sites from WA, Tas and NT, then this is what I think. First of all, the initial Pool isn't everything. All the combination that follow need to be checked as well, as it could end up that it would be better to be in a tougher pool but with a better draw to follow. For example, being with Melbourne in the draw and ending up second might result in a good outcome as you would probably not meet Melbourne again until a Grand Final! Hills should/can qualify top of pool D easily. Sturt and Sandringham seem to constantly be placed in the same group! They have already played in the same starting pool several times: U12 Classic, U14 Dandenong, U14 Easter Classic, U14 Classic and they have also played the Grand Final of last April Easter Classic. Sturt has never lost to Sandringham but the games have always been absolute trillers! always won by a few points difference only and in Dandenong last January on a buzzer beater! As I said in my previous message and going from experience of Qld always bringing a decent team at least in the mix, my top 5 would be Melbourne, Hills or Geelong (who by the way beat Melbourne just recently), Sturt and a Qld Team. Of course the Draw, as always in these tournament, plays a huge role on the final outcome plus on the week anything can happen. My Top five team are based on the overall roster they bring to the table. These five team have certainly the best ones. This has been one of Sturt's main quality with their group. They really have 10 very solid and balanced kids and they do not rely uniquely on a few to win them a game (see Eastern) and even Forestville in SA and many more in Vic.

To Toby ....

I am really sorry if I wasn't meant to mention names! I just assumed that I was making a positive comment on the kid and praising how good he is and I also assumed that all the kids' names are easily available via the Team Stats section in the Sporting Pulse web site anyway!

To Anonymus

I realize that! Are you implying that Sturt is now weaker because of those changes? As I do not think this to be the case, this proves my point even more, Melbourne has increased their Gap even after the new addition of Sturt.

Opti

Sorry if I am wrong, but I thought it was against the rules to name a player at under 14 level! The boy in question is only 13.

Hi all, just thought I would throw my 2 cents in here ......

I think Melbourne will/should win the Championship, having said that, I would not just rave at their development quality rather at their poaching skills.

Without x, they would still be an excellent team but not unbeatable!!! And he is not the only kid poached last year for this year's Nationals! This is also why most of the previous Div 1 Under 12 Melbourne team has now been moved into their Melbourne 2 team making them still a very solid site! Also having such a great squad to train with will help the overall group development. Just to add one more comment, Sturt, who won this year's Adelaide Easter Classic, lost only by 1 point in the semi 2 years prior against Melbourne at the same event. Now they can't even get within 20 points of them!!!

As far as this year's competitor I think leaving Melbourne at place 1, the other top spots will be contended by Geelong, Hills, Sturt and one Qld team with a great player in it, watch for him in the years to come, son of a very well known footballer!

My $0.02,
Opti

Go Nick
Well done on giving up your time to coach. It is only through the dedication of people like yourself that any kids get the opportunity to excell at this elite junior level of sport. Keep up the good work and dont let the naysayers get you down. Having said that less zone would be better for all teams at that level, not just Melbourne Tigers!!!!!

Prisoner of Gravity - you sound like you were at the Melb 1 v Geelong game - did Melbourne have all their players, did Geelong play well, were Melbourne off par of just beaten by a better team?

Re Zone - depends what you are trying to teach. Zone does have a technical component to it, it is also used to hide poor footwork, lack of speed and less agile players. May win you the game, but hardly teaches kids about good defence. When you can play man to man you can play any defence - hence why one should only allow it at the younger levels.

Also no zone allows oppositions kids (young) to develop the driving aspect of their game. Nothing worse that watching an under 10 game where zone is played to the detriment of the development of kids!

It is a good thing that Melb-1 lost - the nationals will be a good tournament now...

For those believing the zone is easy to play and teaches kids nothing - you are dead wrong since it requires a good coordination of all players, not just "standing". It is mainly applied when a technical advantage (read greater skill) of one team is taken away by physical presence of the other. In any case a good team (read skilled) can beat a lousy zone at any time.

My two cents...

I also agree with the no zone rule - it should apply until under 16s across the country. We are not developing kids by teaching them to stand in a key.

Geelong are favourites, especially after beating Melbourne 1 by 2 points - although this was at home

What about NSW and Qld Teams - anything there?

where are the box scores from last weekends results??