Knox Grammar introduces AFL
AUSTRALIAN football is continuing to make huge inroads in Sydney with Knox Grammar becoming only the second private school to introduce AFL as a sport.
It is a significant step forward for the development of the code in the private school system especially since Knox, located on Sydney’s North Shore, has been a strong rugby union school for almost 90 years.
Now, kids have the opportunity to play AFL as a sport on weekends and the school has even installed some new goal posts to make the game accessible to all students.
AFL is growing at a rapid rate in Sydney and NSW with participation rates up 110% to 125,000 in the last five years.
On top of this, a record 18 NSW/ACT players were listed by AFL clubs in 2010 and this number could rise in the coming years courtesy of the newly established Sydney Swans and GWS Giants Academies.
Sydney Swans Academy coach Paul Roos attended Knox on Tuesday to officially launch the school’s new goal posts at their Gillespie Fields.
“This [Knox introducing AFL as a sport] is really the next step [for the development of AFL in Sydney], there’s no question,” Roos said.
“It’s fantastic from Knox to introduce it and hopefully a lot of the other schools follow up with it.
“I think the Academy will also make a huge difference and you can see the excitement from the Academy boys and I’m sure that inspires other boys to play football.
“I think the Academy will be a really big part of it because it really is putting the game in the elite level.
“Now we’re able to offer something that is 22 weeks and feeding into your NSW/ACT Rams, your Under-16s and Under-18s, so there’s a lot better continuity along with the AFL’s support to get kids involved.”
Knox has entered two AFL teams into the Greater Sydney Juniors with this number likely to rise in the coming years as demand for the game grows.
Headmaster of Knox, John Weeks, said the school’s decision to introduce AFL was easy to make as it provides kids with a chance to play a variety of sports.
“We see it [AFL] as a logical move for us at Knox because we’re in a community which is really, really strong on AFL and the boys at our school, probably hundreds of them, are playing AFL on Sundays in local competitions,” Mr Weeks said.
“We’ve done a fair bit of due diligence on AFL’s introduction and we felt, yes, now is the time and … we felt we really needed to get into the full competition.”
Knox has a proud rugby union history and has had a number of stars come through their system including Peter Fitzsimons, Nathan Charles and Ben Alexander.
If the interest in AFL continues to grow as it currently is, it may only be a matter of time until the first Knox student is running around in the red and white.
