Ideas man comes up with one from ... left-field
SEASONED football followers may be immune, if not outright dismissive, of some of the left-field ideas flowing from the mind of Kevin Sheedy, the 27-year coach of Essendon whose tenure at Windy Hill ended a year ago.
A champion for the Aboriginal cause in football and in life, Sheedy yesterday advocated for all Indigenous AFL players to be exempt from the salary cap to aid in the league's expansion plans.
The AFL is set to add two more clubs within the next four to five years: on the Gold Coast and in western Sydney.
Sheedy's reasoning is the AFL must guard against a drain on the talent pool that those clubs may bring about, thereby freeing clubs' finances to find and keep the better players, and maintain the current standard of footy.
Or so the theory goes.
"Should we actually just change the rules and make sure we can encourage even more Indigenous players to come into our game?" Sheedy said at the MCG yesterday at the launched of his book, Kevin Sheedy: Stand Your Ground.
"That would be a tremendous boon for clubs that are worried about losing their quality players."
The idea was given some consideration by the AFL, if for only for a polite second or two.
AFL game development manager Dave Matthews said the AFL talent pool could be added to from international players, such as from Ireland, which has proved fruitful in recent years, the Pacific Islands and South Africa, where numbers of participants in the Indigenous communities there is growing.
DARREN MONCRIEFF
AboriginalFootball@westnet.com.au
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Last Modified on 30/10/2008 23:36