What’s your problem with SUFC if you live in the NI ? - given the rubbish budgets down here and the domination of traditional winter clubs not giving any support to the summer national league teams ANY success is massive progress. Your way off about the role the Academy which looks to be producing good players who have a better chance of pushing on down here than other places in NZ. Much better players than in previous years
I acknowledge the immense achievement of southern players selected as mvp/golden glove/ tournament team at NAGT, however, holistically the academy has not improved the placing of teams. They are still finishing dead last like previous years, hence why the academy is in question.
The individual selections and recognition IS the achievement for Football South.
It's a numbers game.
FootballSouth has a total population base of ~350 k
Compare tat to
Mainland ~700
Waibop ~700
Central ~450
Capital ~400
Auckland / Northland 1.6mil between them
Other regions simply have more players to choose from.
Look at it like this, 1 in xxx players is standout, 2 are very good, 4 are good, 6 are decent and you go downhill from there.
Add to that relative federation population density and make the generalisation that kids from small country towns don't have as much competition at higher levels, so don't have quite the same development opportunities or peer competition, those numbers skew in favour of closer populations: Auckland/Northland, Capital, and Waibop with Hamilton and Tauranga each being twice the size of Dunedin, They also tend to have bigger budgets and economies of scale.
Central, being scattered from A-hole to Africa scew down, but start with a better population base, as do Mainland who get a boost from a main population base of chch, but also have the issues of enormous spaces between places.
Then where Southland might produce 1 standout, 2 vg, 4g, 6 decent and round their squad out with some average players, Waibop meanwhile would have 2 standout, 4vg, 8g and 12 decent and don't need to compromise further down the squad.
Any FS team NOT finishing last is punching above their weight.
The job of any academy or football development organisation is not to produce winning teams for things like NAGT, but (as alluded to by 7thFed) to produce quality individual players that might go on to bigger things.
**broad estimates of numbers and generalisations used to illustrate the point