Building strong relationships with players, parents and senior clubs is imperative to aid transition. The junior football club must play a part in assisting the progression of players to senior football.
What can the junior club do to assist Auskick?
- Distribute player pathway documents to Auskick participants
- Invite the top end youth players to be part of your club’s program
What can the junior club do to assist 8 to 12-year-old?
- Discuss with junior players that they may go on to play with their aligned senior club – distribute a basic pathway document
- Invite the senior club to be part of your program including coaching
- Educate parents on how to encourage and support their children to participate long term in football and why this is important
What can the junior club do to assist 13 to 15-year-old?
- Have a player’s night/dinner at a senior club to experience a senior team training night
- Encourage parents to help young people balance the demands on their time to allow time for sport
- Invite the senior club to be part of your program including coaching
What can the junior club do to assist 16 to 18-year-old?
- Train at local senior club ground several times during the year
- Celebrate local transition successes (i.e. Junior players going on to win individual awards and honours)
- Send a letter to all previous Under 16’s in January/February providing the senior club contact details and encouraging them to register
What can the junior club do to assist senior clubs?
- Support and encourage the efforts of the local senior club
- Provide contact details of Under 18’s players to senior clubs (NB: releasing this information is not in breach of the Privacy Act or AFL Privacy Policy)
- Invite a senior club representative to sit on the junior club’s committee
- Offer a junior representative to sit on the senior club committee
- Hold a joint function/event with the senior club, e.g. quiz night or gala day
- Invite the senior club committee to key junior club events or functions
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the senior and junior clubs will also help maintain a working relationship and aid player transition.
