How do you keep a young player in the game?
The challenge
Independent Football Australia wants football to be the best day of the week for the young people who play it. Founded in 2021, it regulates and runs competitions for private academies across New South Wales and South Australia.
Young players leave football for reasons that have little to do with talent. They lose a trial that was never open. They drop out of a development ladder that is missing a rung. Or, most commonly, the environment around them stops being somewhere they want to be on a Saturday.
The club system has institutionalised those gaps, and private academies have grown into the space. Academies are trusted by parents because the relationship is personal and the focus on personal development, but the sector is almost entirely unregulated. A tournament organiser can admit anyone and run on participation fees.
Players also don't play much. In Japan, under-eights play around 60 matches a year. In Australia 20 would be considered a good season.
The approach
IFA starts with the environment, not the football. Every academy that applies is vetted. Members sign up to hard criteria on safeguarding and governance. The test is simple: can a child play free of abuse and are the coaches around them fit to teach more than technique?
Regulating a sector you also run competitions for invites questions of independence and governance. IFA is a not-for-profit whose governance is independent of member academies. Academy coaches and former professionals who shape its thinking sit on a separate advisory team to make use of their expertise. Entry fees are kept low and increasingly offset by corporate partners, which is a safeguarding measure as much as a financial one. The less IFA depends on its members' money, the more freely it can regulate them.
Outside its safeguarding standards, IFA is permissive. Its members come from different backgrounds and coach accordingly, and IFA regulates how they run themselves rather than what they teach. The point is to protect that variety, not to produce one mould of player.
Then the raw number of games. IFA's competitions sit on top of the matches a player plays in a normal season instead of replacing them. Progression works the same way – as a parallel supplement rather than direct replacement. Football NSW cut the Australian Youth League and took out a rung. In response, IFA built an elite 14-18 league to catch the players who fell through.
The impact
"The biggest thing we've done is keep kids in the game and loving the game."
IFA's first competition, in October 2023, drew 18 academies and more than 1,900 players. By November 2024 it had 45 further applicants, including prospective academies from across Australia. It now has 33 academies and 3,500+ players, with demand running well ahead of its current footprint.
Importantly, behavioural standards are enforced. IFA served 25 breach notices in 2024 on players, academies and spectators. Repeat offenders can lose membership or have their team allocations cut.
Ultimately, Australia is a multi-sport country, and a player in a bad environment can pick up a cricket bat instead. IFA's achievement is setting up a vetted environment with more matches and enforced standards.
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