Blocker's point about PSA schools being accumulators, not developers, is an important one here.
65 kids will get picked over the next two nights out of an age-eligible pool of 25000 boys who play footy.
Being good isn't enough. Being seen is the key.
That a high percentage of the first-round selections will be private school kids is all about that.
The PSA and similar schools are a filtration and collection system that runs in parallel (and often in competition) with the WAFL development system.
One of my kids is in Swans' 16s squad. He goes to a mid-tier Catholic school with no football program. He plays community footy with a whole bunch of kids who are in Govo's footy program and a handful of indigenous boys who have athletics scholarships at Trinity and Guildford Grammar. This was the last season those boys will play community football as they are actively discouraged from doing so by their schools.
The development the state school boys in a footy program receive is immeasurably better than what I see happening at Trinity and Guildford Grammar and yet the advice the better of the Govo boys is receiving is to try and get a scholarship to a PSA school.
Because they get seen there.
My son's community football side would handily beat the PSA school sides I have seen. But AFL scouts aren't showing up to the couple of hundred community football games each weekend. They are going to the collection point that is the PSA comp and the WAFL development games, reliant on the fact that a first-pass filtration has already happened.
Leaves a lot of kids out in the cold.
Greg Harding, talent manager at Swans, never tires of telling the larger development squads the story of Nathan Broad. Didn't get picked for 14s, didn't get picked for 15s, got picked for the squad in 16s but got cut. goes back to clubland and works his arse off and - importantly - grows a whole heap. Gets drafted by Richmond, late-ish age wise. Has two premiership medallions.
They all develop at different rates.
We have allowed a system to happen which is all about drafting at school-leaving age, which makes the private school system more relevant and important than it should be.
Anyway, look forward to Kemp and Will Day.