Any ideas?
8-10 years since Dukes and Tim were at their peak. McDonald and Kennedy really the only ones close to consistent performance at a high level.

We managed to produce Viduka, Aloisi and Agostino, we just happened to get them all at once.

Imagine what we’d do for a guy like McDonald or Christoph Teinert now.

Because any promising youngster who plays centre forward is shunted off to the wings when they begin to play for their clubs in the HAL.

Strikers tend to play in more open space. Most (but not all) world-class strikers tend to have brilliant technical ability, very high football IQ and are very athletic (with respect to acceleration speed and agility). There hasn't been a single senior Australian footballer in recent years who has showed all those individual components with any consistency.

Not just strikers (as this is needed for world-class wingers).

Too many Aussie footballers at senior level have shown some of those components. But not all.

How many A-League clubs are playing young 9s regularly? Blackwood got some time there only because Baba was injured. Otherwise just about everyone has a visa 9

Baba
Maccarone
Asdrubal
O’Donovan
Bobo
Riera
Berisha
McCormack/ Fornaroli
Andrija
Keogh

Tag gary is the only Aussie attacker getting game time.

I really believe Taggart could’ve got there if he had not been injured.

We haven't produced a world class player since 2006 

What Redkat said is spot on.

I guess in the nsl days there was that many teams players like Dukes got their chances

Dylan Tombides.  

Juric is just as good as Kennedy and probably better than Agostinho. Need to remember also that Leckie can play forward, infact until probably 3 seasons ago he was a 9. We still have Timmy also who is still scoring as many as he always has. The visa strikers are def roadblocks for developing 9's though

Kennedy was going a goal every two games in Japan, don't think Juric would be able to match that. Juric's general hold up, pressure and distribution has been excellent the past few months. It's just his finishing which lets him down a little at times, he's guilty of missing a few chances for his club side too.

I'd be really keen to see a front 3 of Kruse, Juric and Leckie when all are playing and scoring at club level. 

I thought Jamie Maclaren might be a chance but looks like he made a poor choice with his selection of club at the moment. Here’s hoping he can work it out. Different type of striker to anyone else we have at the moment.

In fairness Mooy is probably our only properly World Class player across the park at the moment.

The fact that most Marquee spots are reserved for a foreign striker doesn’t help much either. In a league with no Pro/Rel giving young kids a chance shouldn’t be as difficult as some teams make it out to be.

Sainsbury is also just he's not recognised as such yet by the international football community.

Same way many of us were saying mooy was before he reached premier league and got laughed at. Just because someone isnt playing at a world class level doesn't mean they arent world class quality. Anyone who knew anything about football could see Mooy was pure quality. Didnt matter what level you put him at. If a guy makes a run and you can put it on a 10c coin to him you're quality add to that his engine and striking ability, doesnt matter what standard you're playing at you are going to be good.  

We produced Christian Vieri too, he just played for the wrong team

Aime Jacquet, French World Cup winning coach and then French national TD, claimed neither were world class.

 He advanced that if Australia had had a world class striker in Germany 2006, we would have gone further.

The strikers who have scored at a goal every 2 games played have been Cahill, Kennedy and Join Aloisi.

Macca scored 0 goals in 25 Socceroo games. Dukes scored 11 out of 43 matches.

Off forum I've just been told that Kruse is 30.

At that age his finishing his hardly going to improve.

He has been very impressive in the HAL this season.

Who were those 2 world class players in 2006?

Dukes & Harry were great/world class for Australia standard, but at World wide level, they were not. Cahill is just a Socceroo LEGEND that we will extremely difficult to replicate.

There are no other players then stand head & shoulders above the current players we have at present.

Would be leading the line today. 

because we have 9 professional teams in australia. and pretty much none of them use australian strikers consistently.

cahill is better than harry and dukes.  schwarzer is also up there.

cahill and schwarzer can perform in any team.  

Having grown up in Australia playing Rugby League and Cricket and having the sports seasons split the year .I now see a huge difference with my son growing up playing football in Germany.The only time he doesn’t play for his local club is during school holiday periods.Otherwise every other week is football only.
During Summer outdoors on grass,Artificial surfaces and in Winter indoors on artificial surfaces or gymnasium wooden floor courts.They have never played with size 3 or 4 balls.He has played with size 5 since he was 4. So for him the ball has gotten so much easier to kick and trick with as he has gotten older. When at school they mix it up with the older boys and watch how the big boys play.So football practice is pretty much everyday of the year.
The other thing is registration fees.He paid 20 euros 4 years ago and that’s it.No other costs since.If he needs a full new tracksuit it’s subsidised by the club and 5 euros was what we paid for a new team zip up tracksuit top.Bags,Beanies and team kits are all free.So imagine how many undiscovered strikers could be in Australian suburbs due to their parents not being able to afford registration fees and kits.
Germany has an amazing scouting setup.Over 300 talent promotion areas.Each area basically oversees 60 clubs and organise talent sighting days.The best kids are picked with each group promoting max 20 kids.That’s 6000 talented kids a year getting extra training by A licensed trainers.They start off in the youngster group8-10 yrs old for a couple years,then move into a 12 year old group till 14 then move into a group 14-16.The aim is to get all those boys in the final 14-16 group into the top league academies.
My son is 8  and last year was selected into the Rhgeingau-Taunus-Kries Talent promotion group of only 16 boys and  4 months into it has already been selected by an Academy for a training group.His Hoping he’ll be selected in the U10 18/19 season.So in regards to finding strikers Australia needs to change how It scouts boys and nurtures them.Then the training and facilities have to be present too.
A mate of mine is a trainer in Cairns he came to visit me and their club is 50 yrs old.They are only now getting a club house built.He couldn’t believe that my sons under 7 team at the time had 4 trainers and the training equipment he dreamed off.His son trained with my boys team.He had a hard time playing with the size 5 ball and the faster speed of the ball roll on an artificial surface.
So a lot to do in Australia to find our future stars.It's a positive move to see more artificial fields being built in Australia.
Football Australia and local clubs should think of using unused basketball courts with indoor boots and set up an indoor Junior league after the Outdoor season is over.Get the boys playing more.

Nail on the head. It's not that our guys aren't good enough; their position is an attractive one for clubs to market with star imports. Aussie strikers aren't even getting minutes. Frustrating. The MLS is bigger now but the influx of players from CONCACAF and Africa has definitely affected the USA team in some way.

Germany on the other hand always give their own players a go and look how that's working out. 

If Fornaroli becomes an Aussie, can he play for Socceroos and if so, would we want him to?

I thought 9 Aussie teams in a closed system would be good enough?

This sums it up for me - throw enough shit at the wall and eventually some of it will stick.

Simply increasing the number of teams will go a long way to increasing the percentage of Aussie strikers available. Combine that with a second division, which may not have the resources to recruit visa players like the first division teams can, then that percentage should increase dramatically.

This is not a problem unique to Australia - very few leagues have a culture of putting time and effort into moulding domestic strikers, especially in the cut throat world of professional football. It's normally easier to import a ready made player.

That said, there are 3 Aussies in the top 5 of all time A-League goals (Thompson, Brosque and Bridge), so history shows that once a club finds a regular goal scorer, they tend to stick with them and help them flourish.

Yes he could. That would be in 2020, he'd be 33. You would hope we wouldn't be wanting him by then.

Some great answers and replies here.

Here's mine:
The entire Australian system under-prepares youth footballers and loses many of them due to the user pays model at critical development ages. Thus making it impossible to develop World-Class or even European-Class footballers from this environment.
So there.

It's not just that though. Every time an Aussie striker shows promise in the A-League, they head off overseas, and end up sitting on the bench for the next few years.

This.