THIS past weekend saw the 2023 AFL Women’s Academy intake come together for their first training camp, held across multiple venues in Victoria. The 30-player cohort, comprised exclusively of draft eligible prospects born in 2005, is representative of the nation’s next generation of footballing talent and seeks to prepare each player for entry to the elite level.

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The Hangar hosted coaches and players on Friday for a skills session, before the group moved on to Geelong Grammar’s facilities over the weekend. National Academy Manager Tarkyn Lockyer was in the thick of things, lauding the “energy” of his pupils across an impressively paced session, and backing the potential of this year’s budding draft class.

“Any time that you get a group of players like this together, particularly in the first session you get a ton of energy,” he said. “You can feel the excitement and the one thing that we know is the ball moves a little bit quicker, so it’s always going to be an elevated experience. For the first session today there was very much a skills focus and to me it looked like it was done very well.

“You look at this crop of players that we’ve got in front of us and we’re pretty comfortable with where they sit. I think everyone’s got pretty high ambition for this particular group of players so we’re fortunate enough to be able to bring them in.”

Among the challenges of bringing together a collaboration of talent from far and wide reaches of the nation, is communication among different state programs, junior and senior; and getting the balance right between a winning and development focus. Star prospects like Lauren Young and Alyssia Pisano are also being managed back from long-term injuries.

“It’s always a challenge,” Lockyer said. “Some of the learnings you get from winning are some really good ones, but it’s often not the be all and end all. In any of our dealings with players in our programs it’s about what’s best for the player and how we can fast-track their development.

“One of the initiatives which I think is really cool is we try and engage stakeholders from all different states and territories and programs so that by bringing them in and then spending time in our environment we feel like we can build a really strong relationship with them.

“All of those (returning or injured) players obviously have specific individual programs and we’ll liaise with their state programs to make sure that we’re complimenting everything that they’ve been doing, particularly with the medical staff as well. Ensuring that we’re giving them an adequate experience that matches what they’re physically capable of.”

Between now and the Academy’s next training camp, competitions will commence and allow the coaches involved to switch focus “from pre-season mode to in-season mode”, according to Lockyer.

“The thing you get then is game performance,” he said. “The game tells you what you need to do and what you need to work on.”

Having taken on an Under 23 All-Star side in the wake of AFLW expansion last year, the Academy can also look forward to locking horns with a senior team this time around, likely from the VFLW.