Agreed. In reality today and yesteryear very different. A lot less kids play league as a percentage of available kids. When I was young never heard of soccer. There was just league and that what we played. I did hear but there were no local competitions or friends playing it. Today is very different. Hence probably why there was more talent back then. Today when I look at family and friends for every 50 kids playing soccer there is one kid playing league. Most of the clubs I knew about as juniors in league do not even think exist today. Yet so so many clubs of other codes have flourished and today more being created. Hope I am making sense.
That’s very different to the my local area . RL is by far the sport that has most kids hearts. I’m sure football has higher junior participation, but that’s usually until u13s where kids grow up and mum tends to have less of a say.
And we are lucky in this country more than most , that the most popular sport in the world is a corrupt Ponzi scheme here , designed to rort mums and dads out of thier hard earned at the minute possibility little Johnny can make “it”.
It’s like 3k a year for your kid to play “reps” . Which really if we are honest with ourselves by an elite skills comparisons it would be like calling division 2 local u14s reps, such is the lack of quality of footballers in this country, but actually more importantly the “rep” teams as I said are Ponzi schemes usually built around ethnic communities manipulating parents out of thier hard earned .
I know of many friends kids who play rep football , and are in academy’s paying hundreds a week to some guys academy , who at best played off the bench for Marconi division 2 or Sydney United in the NPL.
Former Socceroos , definitely , I get that , but Johnny bloggs bench player for Leichhardt Apia . I mean seriously ? . Anyways I digress .
I think because of this , kids leave soccer in thier teens , and I’m 💯 sure the data confirms this .
And really sports like AFL and NRLZ benefit from this , as most elite studies say that the kids who diversified thier sports growing up , tend to be the far superior sports men .
There’s many books about it now .