The AFL has found that kids aged from 10 to 14 have dropped off from playing community footy after the pandemic, a decline that league boss Gillon McLachlan believes is due to kids “living in their screens”.
McLachlan told The Age that getting the 10 to 14-year-old group back to playing locally represented the AFL’s biggest challenge at community level. He said the drop-off in that cohort was both in football’s heartland state of Victoria and nationally.
McLachlan said that, apart from that young age group - which parents found difficult to persuade to go to training - participation in grassroots footy was back to the previous levels for other demographics.
AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has put a decline in kids playing footy down to screen time. Credit:AP
“Our biggest challenge in that is sort of the 10 to 14-year cohort,” he said. “Emerging data [says] a lot of areas are back at 100 per cent or 110 percent, greater than pre-COVID levels.
“The vulnerability in Victoria, in fact, nationally... participating [in] community football is the 10-14-year cohort, and we’re going to make some announcements.
“Ten to 14 year-olds, that seems to be - everything is tracking at pre-COVID levels except that area.”
Asked why those kids had dropped off from playing, the AFL boss said: “Well we’re all speculating there, but I’ve believe, you know, I’ve got a 14-year-old, and I think it’s that age group that are teenagers, socialisation is important, and they’ve leant into their phones, and digitally and sort of started living in their screens.
“That’s what I believe and there’s, at that age, they’re starting to live independently and broader. It’s harder for parents to say, “Cmon, we’re getting out of the house and we’re going to training.′
“At community level, it’s getting our clubs, our programs, our volunteer networks supporting and get you know, our participation base back and firing.
“And footy’s going to play its role in that, and we will get them (10-14-year-olds) back, it’s just going to be the hardest cohort it looks like.”
Aside from that specific drop off among kids in community footy, McLachlan said the greatest challenge heading into 2022 was people returning to AFL games.
“Getting everyone back to the football at the elite level, getting that confidence and that rhythm of our game back,” McLachlan said, adding the AFL did not expect any interruptions to the 2022 season due to COVID-19.
“Our confidence as a community is accelerating fast every day. I’m not saying it’s where it was. But I think people want their lives back ... people need to get the rhythm of their week back rather than living in these bubbles.”
‘Living in their screens’: McLachlan’s fight to get kids back into local footy - The Age
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