‘Non-competitive’ junior AFL slammed by critics

Critics have panned a proposed ban on scoring, results and awards at under-10 AFL football matches, saying children need to learn to win and lose.

The AFL-developed guidelines, which are being rolled out around Australia, suggest that players up to 10 years of age must play modified rules games for no premiership points. The guidelines also remove finals, ladders, match scoring and the publication of players' names.

Extending guidelines previously used in under-8 and under-9 games, the guidelines don’t rule out skill clinics and carnival days but discourage representative teams.

However, the ABC reports that author, life coach and mother of four Margie Warrell says children need to learn resilience and coping with failure from a young age.

Warrell told the ABC "when they do go out into the world they know that it's not always fair, it's not always a level playing field.

"There will be winners, there will be losers, and they will be able to handle it when things don't go the way they want them to."

"Resilience is a skill that's essential for success in life.

"If we don't know how to handle failure or adapt to change and handle setbacks, we are not going to be able to win at the bigger game of life."

Ballarat Football League Chief Executive Rod Ward says the local under-10 competition has been non-competitive for the past eight years, stating "the games are played just as competitively, but at that age the priority is to help the kids to fall in love with the game.

"The kids walk off the ground and they know who's won."

AFL Auskick ambassador and Brownlow medallist Shane Crawford backs the AFL's stance, adding "I think it should be all about fun and not necessarily concentrating on the scoreboard.

"I've seen kids walk away from games, 7, 8 years of age, totally devastated because they've been thumped and it didn't go their way, whereas this way, everybody walks away from it happy."

"That's how I learnt to love it, by just going to training and starting off there and from there obviously the competitive side of things comes in."