Ando’s Shout: Community football clubs concerned over dwindling AFL Draft payments

Community clubs are concerned by the dwindling reward for producing AFL draftees, with one official accusing the AFL of “not giving a fig” about them.

Unhappiness is rife in suburban and country football ranks at the lack of remuneration for producing an AFL-listed player.

There were times when home clubs would receive payments for milestones, such as a debut, 10th game, 50th games or 100th.

It could ultimately result in excess of $10,000 to the player’s original club (prior to them being picked by an U18 side, which is then unfairly given all the credit on draft night).

By 2019, that figure had dropped to around $1500 and over the past two years hasn’t been paid at all, the “Talent Development Fee” being withheld from AFL Victoria by the AFL due to Covid.

Worryingly, the AFL is now said to be reviewing the funding of these programs and its distribution.

Or as one suburban official said, “it just reinforces a widely-held view that that AFL does not give a fig about community football”.

Andrew Brayshaw came through the junior ranks at Hampton Rovers.

Players from the Ballarat, Ellinbank and Mornington Peninsula leagues.

RICHO FOLLOWING LILLEE, HOGG’S PATHWAY

Should Jhye Richardson force his way into Australia’s first Test team this Wednesday at the Gabba, it will have a lot to do with a searing spell he produced at the same ground three weeks back.

The 25-year-old, who stands just 178cm (5’10”), bowled quick outswing which Dale Steyn will tell you stands up at the highest level.

His second innings figures of 5-23 from 22 overs to give him eight for the match prompted these thoughts from rival skipper in Usman Khawaja: “I’m a big Jhye Richardson fan and he bowled beautifully in this game. He’s got excellent skills.”

It wouldn’t be the first time an Australian bowler has been picked courtesy of one spell, or in the case of Dennis Lillee and Rodney Hogg, just one ball.

Jhye Richardson celebrates a wicket in the Shield clash with Queensland.

Rudney Hogg steams in.

Lillee, a young WA tearaway at the time without Test experience, knocked Geoff Boycott’s cap off in a tour game at the WACA, and while the prolific English opener went on to score a century, that moment helped Lillee get selected later in the 1970-71 Ashes series.

It was a similar scenario eight years later when a rampaging Hogg “pinged” a very promising English middle-order batsman named Clive Radley, who before meeting Hogg at the Adelaide Oval had averaged 48 in his eight Tests.

The blow ended his Test career and wasn’t well received as Hogg found out many years later.

“That was the start of the 1978/79 Ashes series and there were a few spots up for grabs with Lillee and ‘Thommo’ unavailable due to WSC. I knew that Alan Hurst would be one of the opening bowlers and I hoped I would be the other,” recalled Hogg, 70, from Perth where he now lives.

“I played for SA against England in a tour game and they were coming out all right, plus that summer our wickets had some juice in them. That one ball that smashed Radley got me a place in the first Test team, just like Dennis Lillee got a game eight years earlier when he knocked Boycott’s cap off in a tour game in Perth,” Hogg says.

“Radley never played Test cricket again. In 2005 during the Ashes series in England I was at a function where a woman kept staring at me. Initially I thought her intentions were of an amorous nature but that was a long way off the mark.

“In the end she came up to me and said, ‘I’ve been wanting to see you for 25 years’. She was a bit aggressive and had a glass of red wine in her hand which I thought I was going to cop. She was dirty on me for ending the career of her husband.”

The woman in question was Clive Radley’s wife.

BOXING LEGEND WON’T BE DOWN FOR LONG

Barry Michael survived the punching power of Al “Earthquake” Carter, Jin Shik Choi and Lester Ellis during his storied 60 bout career, so a triple bypass during the week was never going to pose a problem.

But he did liken the soreness as the equivalent of “three 15-rounders”. Michael, 66, is recovering in Cabrini, Malvern, and plans to be back on the pads early next year.

Bob Skilton with current-day Swans Luke Parker and Josh Kennedy.

GREATS GRANTED LIFE MEMBERSHIP OF PRESTIGIOUS CLUB

Emotional scenes at Melbourne’s oldest non-profit sporting club during the week when Frank Sedgman, 94, and Bob Skilton, 83, were granted life membership to the Vingt Cinq Club.

The club, in its 60th year and so named because 25 sportsmen formed it and Vingt Cinq is 25 in French, honoured two of Australia’s finest living legends at Gerry Ryan’s Prince of Wales Hotel.