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I think our U21 team should be ONLY 18 year olds. We don't really have to worry about winning. More important things like getting these 18 year olds trained as fast as possible.

Players dont train faster if they are on the u21 team do they? I still think we should put our strongest team forward or a team of players that could eventually be in the senior team. I also believe that it is the U21 coach job to identify the best young players and assist their managers that have these young players, like you said.

I like C-Cat idea of teams that may turn bot with young trained players added to the senior team so we dont loose them. does this also work if a bot team has a young player they are training, so when they are taken over the young player is put on the TL?

What is the thinking behind having -only- 18 year olds on the team?

I don't think there is that much of a turn around on trainees being trained in Australia's relatively small player base at the moment that we could afford to only have 18 year olds trained.


J-Dog: you don't get any extra training from being on a national team but you do get extra experience for playing in the extra games

Thats what I thought. For extra experience we should still put players in the team that have the potential to go over to the senior team and focus on those players. So that may mean playing an 18 yo over a 21yo even tho the 21yo is subsantially better.

I think that we also need a player data base centre where only the U/21 and NT coach can see all players that have been submitted which will make it easier to ick and choose players.
Here a good example which is used in Hattrick http://oceania.nattrick.ca
It has minimum requirement to not flood the system with useless players and it also can help a user train up a player correctly. I think that if we had something like that, it would go along way into improving our U/21 and NT heaps.

Last edited by pete at 4/9/2009 12:04:37 AM

I was working on the new NT forums having the ability to send players to the NT Coaches... Unfortunately there is no information available about NTs on the BBAPI so my programming stopped for that part of the site.

I might add this idea into BBStats at some point when I get a break. I am flat out at work and uni at the moment so time is hard to find.

I sent a bbmail to Hadders on tuesday morning regarding the Taiwan game.

His reply was that he was on holiday & put the team line-up in using an internet cafe.

The team that played wasn't what he wanted & was really dissapointed with what happened.

It looks like an error of some sorts & not Hadders fault.

Don't know if he's still on Holiday but I'm sure he will explain when he can.

Great to see people taking an intrest & getting involved in discussions. All suggestions are worth looking at & maybe implementing by the start of next season.

If i had the money and was gaining good profit each week i would look out for the young C/PF on the transfer list that i could train. But its really hard because a player with the right skills are usually out of my range.

Also regarding the draft i believe that the bottom teams with the top draft picks getting NT capable draftees with good potential and are either not training them properly or the manager loses interest in the game because they have been demoted.

Ive tried training young players week in week out and its hard when you have a set roster and training routine. And when you have NT players you are expected to train them to keep them in the team.

The reason I said have the U21 team as only 18yos is that the team should be a stepping stone to the actual NT.

As much as everyone would love to have 2 great winning NTs, the flow through would be better for the main NT if the U21 team just guided managers in training an 18yo super fast. It would also benefit managers a lot more because they would make killings with all of the sales of 18yos

but you don't mean kicking those 18 year old's out and getting a whole new batch in every season do you?

I suppose it would depend wholely on the sort of training/mentor system you were thinking of setting up but for experience alone i would think that keeping some of the better young players around would be a good idea.

I'm with DireWolf i don't understand how having an all 18yo u21 team would be much benefit?

How many 18yo's from each year actually would become National Players? A couple at best unless its a really good year, so would it be better off keeping those couple from each class in the squad for as long as possible giving them as much experience as we can?
Rather then giving a whole heap a little experience, would be better to give the few with a very high chance of making it a lot of experience...


So instead of having a squad full of 18yos we just need to identify the 18yo's who will eventually become National Players. Put them in the squad ahead of the 20 or 21yo who may have better skills now but will never reach the National Team once they leave the U21 squad...

We would then end up with a even spread of 18-21yo players, all of which are the top of their class and getting as much experience as possible. As opposed to just using 20-21yo's giving them only 1-2 years of experience and the majority of it going to players who wont ever make the National Team.


What do people think of that? Would mean we'd have a weaker u21 team but could mean a stronger National Squad in the future...

So instead of having a squad full of 18yos we just need to identify the 18yo's who will eventually become National Players. Put them in the squad ahead of the 20 or 21yo who may have better skills now but will never reach the National Team once they leave the U21 squad...

What do people think of that? Would mean we'd have a weaker u21 team but could mean a stronger National Squad in the future...

That's exactly what should happen until the Australian BB Community grows and we have managers who get those early draft picks and stick around instead of vanishing. If the team doesn't make it though the first stage of qualifying, then we stack the team full of 18/19 year olds in preperation for the following qualificcation. It's the only logical thing to do.

Edit: We should also come up with a 4-5 season newbie U21/NT training plan and post it to make sure that if someone plans on having a future player in one of those squads, that they know how to train them.

Last edited by pete at 4/9/2009 3:36:14 AM