Player agents defy AFL push on signing teens
AFL player agents have defied a recommendation from head office that would have prevented them from approaching schoolboys as young as 15.
Caroline Wilson has been chief football writer for The Age since 1999. She was the first woman to cover Australian Rules football on a full-time basis and the first woman to win the AFL's gold media award. She has won the AFL Players' Association's football writer of the year (1999) and the AFL Media Association's most outstanding football writer and most outstanding feature writer (2000, 2003, 2005). In 2014 she won the Melbourne Press Club's Graham Perkin award as Australian journalist of the year. She also won a MPC Quill Award in 2003.
AFL player agents have defied a recommendation from head office that would have prevented them from approaching schoolboys as young as 15.
It was April 2014 when Brian Cook, a candidate for the top AFL job that ultimately went to Gillon McLachlan, sold to the commission his vision for an ethical, values-driven competition, similar to the one he helped build at Geelong.
For Gillon McLachlan, coming to the realisation on Thursday that he would be forced to terminate not one but two senior executives as a result of in-house affairs, was comparable to the various stages of grief.
The revelation on Monday that a male senior AFL staffer had an affair with a younger female colleague has created a significant degree of discomfort at the game's head office.
The now inevitable departure of Nathan Buckley from Collingwood begs so many follow-up questions, but the most intriguing is who will replace him.
​Carlton have reinforced their vow to rebuild the club via youthful elite talent by signing a trio of their most promising teenagers.
Port coach Ken Hinkley sometimes felt football was like life and death ... then the sudden death of his best mate delivered a terrible reminder.
The Laguntas — an aboriginal word for tiger — were controversially introduced into the Victorian football landscape in 2013 at a time when the competition was largely bereft of Indigenous talent raised in this state.
One of the most contentious issues in the modern game is about to be relaxed in the new collective bargaining agreement with the players.
Gold Coast lacked preparation for their first and potentially last international game of football.
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