Rejected players from the AFL draft will be targeted under a plan to reverse Australia's declining Olympic results. Source: Getty Images
AUSTRALIA'S commitment to rectify waning international performances hinges on a scavenger hunt through the AFL's rejects.
Three months after our worst Olympic medal haul in decades, the Australian Sports Commission yesterday announced its master plan for an overhaul of high performance sport, including a $20 million boost for coach development and talent identification.
Having sought no increase on the $170 million it receives in annual government funding, the two buzz words for the ASC are "streamlining" and "creativity" to squeeze more from the talent pool.
One of the key planks in the ASC's blueprint, dubbed "the Winning Edge", will be the allocation of $2 million for an annual sports draft that aims to expose players overlooked by the football codes to Olympic sports.
In the AFL alone, about 1600 players nominated for last week's national draft. Less than 100 were selected.
"The number of athletes who can sustain a career in one of the football codes is quite small," ASC chief executive Simon Hollingsworth said.
"A lot don't end up at the elite level and are running around at suburban ovals when they could be competing in stadiums.
"It's not about poaching them away from football. It's about providing a mechanism that exposes them to different options."
To be run by the Australian Institute of Sport, the draft is based on a model conceived more than 10 years ago by Queensland Academy of Sport talent search coordinator Chelsea Warr.
Warr is now the head of athlete development at UK Sport, which is beefing up Great Britain's high performance program with soccer players who fail to win professional contracts.
The concept has been around for some time, with London rowing silver medallist and former hurdler Kim Crowe an example of what can be achieved through talent identification.
But this would be the first coordinated push to raid the country's stock of fringe AFL players and those who suffer a sport-specific career ending injury.
"We have to be creative in how we address this issue," Hollingsworth said.
The sports draft was welcomed by top swimming coach Michael Bohl, whose greatest student Stephanie Rice was once earmarked by talent spotters as a gun cyclist.
Bohl was also pleased to hear the ASC has moved to retain and develop coaches.An additional $3 million will be provided for coaching and leadership programs.
That might be enough to end the talent drain of top coaches to Australia's rivals.
"If we lose a lot of coaches it makes our job harder. Any move to help retain and develop coaches is a welcome one because there are a lot of coaches doing it tough," Bohl said.
Yesterday's announcement recognised that Australia's support for high performance programs was no longer globally competitive.
Australia's medal haul fell to 35 in London, compared to a peak of 58 in Sydney and 50 at the Athens Games in 2004.
And the number of world champions across priority sports has gradually declined from 25 in 2006 to 17 this year.
The stated goals of the ASC plan include returning Australia to the top five medal winning nations at the summer Olympics and producing at least 20 world champions every year.
"The plain truth is that success at the pinnacle end of sport is much more difficult to achieve than in the past," ASC chairman John Wylie said.
"International competition is increasing and intensifying every day."
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