WAFC aims to grow football talent pool in Western Australia following pathways review

The WAFC has identified growing the size of the talent pool as one of its main priorities following a comprehensive review of the sport’s pathways, believing that 20 per cent of WA’s best talent is yet to be discovered.

Players from under-represented groups including regional or remote areas, players from households with a low socio-economic status, Indigenous players, females and new migrants or first-generation Australians will form part of the WAFC’s plan to redefine talent development.

CODE Sports has obtained a copy of the WAFC’s talent review, titled ‘Reimagining talent identification and development in West Australian Football.’

Led by deputy chair Dixie Marshall, the report commissioned three academics, Professor Sophia Nimphius, Dr Job Fransen and Dr Andrew Lyttle, to reimagine and restructure talent identification.

As part of her role on the board of the Australian Sports Commission, Marshall crossed paths with esteemed AFL administrator and former Sydney chief executive Andrew Ireland, one of the key architects of the Swans’ Academy Program. As a result, Marshall began to investigate local pathways and formed a talent committee which reached the conclusion that WA was in danger of falling behind.

“If we get it right, it’s a real game changer for our sport,” Marshall told CODE Sports. “It’s about equitable access to opportunities.

“That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.

“The risk of not doing anything is that we’ll continue down the path of draftees coming from a predominantly private school background.

“There are so many kids who A. aren’t being identified and B. aren’t getting the opportunities and access to coaching and facilities. We’re going to hunt for that talent.”

“The best talent we have, may be talent we have never seen,” was the guiding principle of the report. A framework was formed before the leads interviewed 29 key stakeholders including every WAFL chief executive, West Coast CEO Don Pyke, former Eagles boss Trevor Nisbett, WAFC Aboriginal and Inclusion Leader Phil Narkle, AFL player movement manager Ned Guy and WAFC Talent Committee’s Brad Wira. Head of Community Engagement Simon Eastaugh represented Fremantle.

WAFC talent manager Adam Jones and Coaching Specialist – Talent Pathways Trent Cooper were not spoken with nor were U18s coaches Marc Webb and Beau McDonald. Executive manager of talent and football operations Scott Baker was interviewed but has since taken a redundancy after his role was changed to remove ‘talent’ following a recommendation from the review.

Just three members of WA’s U18s girls team were taken in last year’s AFLW draft but that could double in this month’s ballot. 10 West Australians have been named in the 2025 AFL National Academy squads.

“It’s not just the AFL,” Marshall said. “We’ll produce more WAFL players and hopefully we’ll be able to rebuild the foundation of our sport.

“The Northern states obviously get first access to the talent they produce. There’s an incentive there.

“We won’t get priority access but we believe that if we develop more Western Australian kids, they’ll be more likely to stay in Western Australia.”

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While those familiar with the review are supportive of the outcomes it reached they believe that funding will be the biggest barrier to carrying out the recommendations. Others believed that a review was not necessary and the same areas for improvement could’ve been identified internally.

“Growing the size of the talent pool will naturally increase the amount of talented players we develop throughout the pathway, even if nothing else changes throughout the pathway,” the report read. “Paired with overcoming some of the inefficiencies that exist in the current pathway can then turn WA’s talent pathway into one that consistently produces talent which holds its own in the AFL and AFLW from the breadth of WA as a state.”

The report came up with 39 recommendations that were split into four categories – immediate, short-term, medium-long term and implementation ideas which require further discussion, education, funding or consideration.