Leck gone to pascoe vale, and duncan also gone to the npl. Shame for both of them. i think both of them are squad level a-league players talent wise. Maybe not so much for leck as he will be on the older side next season but would be happy for Zach to be back in orange. 

on better news this tweet from David Pourre is encouraging

https://twitter.com/DRPourre/status/1136510969117470720

Robbie should have recovered from the party in madrid and should be back and rearing to go soon. players are still on holidays but are starting to get back in town.

Duncan should have stayed, some bad career advice there imo. 

Leck not good enough so needed to move on. 

A fair few Roar fans complaining “what’s the point of an Academy if you’re going to let players go” ... that is kinda the point of an Academy - you keep only the best ones: Freke, O’Toole, Powell 

So, unless I've missed someone, in the past 4 seasons the only young players that have come through the youth setup at Brisbane and are still considered A-League quality are 3 left backs - Brown, O'Toole and Powell.  Perhaps you could add Akbari to that list.  Extremely poor if you ask me.

How many Academy players did Glory, Sydney and Victory have while dominating the competition these past 4 seasons? 

None! 

Especially considering the Roar have an entire state to harvest for talent.

It makes you wonder.
if our NYL players are the best in Australia.Yet only one or two are good enough for the HAL.?What does that say ?.....Clesrly something is not right somewhere.

The gap between youth players and A League is huge. It just is. 

People laugh when the Matildas lose to U15 Boys teams but the gap in physicality between NYL and HAL is about the same as that. 

As yet yet we don’t have a “bridge” between NYL and HAL, in Europe that bridge would be the reserve league (which we don’t have) or lower professional leagues (which we also don’t have) so I dont think (as a country) we’re transitioning enough youth players through to the HAL.

The Championship may help if it gets up and running. 

So so if you’re a Coach in Roars Academy this year you have to choose what players to retain in NYL, and what players to accept coming up from U16 

Put Leck to the test: was he good enough as a winger or right back or do you look down at U16’s and replace him with one of those? 

Bottom line at youth level is generally to get rid of them quick - if they’re not good enough, cut them. 

QLD has 80,000 registered players and NSWs over 420,000 ... what the f’ck are they doing down there lol? 

In an ideal world, Roar would load these players to 2nd division clubs to get game time and work on their game. As it stands, the better younger players are just passed around Aleague clubs (probably moving on a promise of game time), only to get maybe a total of 90 minutes of game time across a season.
Hopefully these two develop a bit quicker and get actual game time in the npl instead of not even making the match day squad in Sydney or Melbourne. 

It's a real shame that Duncan left.  I hope his agent isn't doing irreparable damage to the kid's career.   His wiki page is funny, has him as both a midfielder for AGF in Denmark and Marconi as his current club.

We desperately need a second division.At the moment picking youth players to make the step up to HAL is pure guess work.
Powell has his chance playing in his preferred postion with experienced players around him and does enough to avoid making a clanger.Gets another chance and is solid again.
Leck  gets played out of positon at RB and looks lost.Then thrown in different postions looks ok at times and lost at others.No surpise.But he is cut.
Duncan plays one game at the end of the season.Does ok.But not enough game time to see if its a one off and upgrade him .So  he goes.
Barnett?
It's a tough gig finding and keeping youth these days.In days gone by Oar,Sarota,Kruse,Nichols,Willaims,Yeboah,DeVere,Borello,etc seemed to have the same issues stepping up.But somehow got more of a chance to show their abilities.
Maybe its easier in a winning team as opposed to the worst ever?

I'm not necessarily having a go at Roar. But it's a sad indictment of player development at some of the biggest clubs in Australia don't you think?

It's not necessarily the success of the team - but teams doing well tend to be more settled. So a young player can come in and play his role each week and gradually get better at it, surrounded by familiar faces. Look at Leck - in comparison - did well the previous season when coming on in his usual RW position. This year he not only plays out of position, but is surrounded by an ever changing team and structure - and playing alongside others who are also new or not specialists. Was bound to end in tears.

The interesting thing about the players you mentioned is that they seemed to be far more ready to play at A-League level than the latest crop. Then again Clut and Calletti both looked pretty ready when they first came on teh scene, but for some reason didn't maintain it (let alone improve).

Oh it is. The pathway is broken between NYL and first team. 

I’m not sure how we explain Williams, Zullo, Kruse, Oar, etc. they had the same pathway? 
Must admit that most of the Roar youth seem to have pretty slight physiques.

Players return to training on July 1st

How many? I guess I should look at the roar web site :)

so far i believe we have 9 contracted senior players. probably 3 youth contracts and plenty of scholarship contracts. 

with the rumours that Daggs is being shopped around i believe we need to sign 12 senior players (5 foreign spots and 2 marquees available)

that is some signing spree we need to go on. you would hope that the majority would be on deck at the start of training with perhaps 2  maybe 3 spots still being finalised in the first month of training. that still leaves 9 players that i hope would already be signed (or should be damn close to it).

time to start the announcements roar!

If the rumours are true most of the business is done, it’s just a case of when they decide to announce them 

Looking forward to see what the new signings look like.  You would want them all together ASAP.

I’m intrigued if it’s true that all the visa players are done - normally there’s 1-2 late signings right there. 

So with 9 players contracted and a target of 23:

5 from other A League club’s 
5 visa from overseas (4 if Roy is true)
2-3 returning Aussie’s (brad Smith would be nice) 
maybe leave one slot free for January which is what victory and SFC have been doing. 

It's clear there would be a lot of Aussie HAL players to be signed.But who?I dont see much quality out there.

dont think we would be able to afford Smith. He apparently gets 1.3 million pounds a year with Bournemouth even if we were only picking up a quarter of his salary that is too much for a left back. it would be the steal of the century to get him on non-marquee wages (even if Bournemouth are plying well over odds for him).

Apparently there are rumours of brad Inman. I think he could be a good pick op for the roar

Brad Inman surfaced over the weekend on UK Twitter having been released by Rochdale I think; same channels linking Tom Aldred to Australia/Roar. 

Bart Schenkveld
luke brattan,
Toisi
ramy Najjarine
Joshua Brillante
Aaron Calver

there are 6 players that are off contract, the right age and in positions that we need. there are surely also players that will mutually terminate their contract as well. 

Calver is off to Western United already..  
Brillante wants to go abroad,  other wise i'm sure Syd will give him a new contract if nothing comes off as a first preference.
Id be happy to have Troisi but he was on Marquee contract wasn't he,  would be demanding a lot.. 

Not sure we need 3 LBs, none of whom can play anywhere else? If we got Smith surely we don't keep Powell AND O'Toole?

Fair point although I was thinking of smith as the wide left midfield position with O’Toole competing for the third defensive position in a 3-5-2 (Powell won’t be near the starting XI next year). 

No to Troisi for me. Way too expensive for what he is. 

apparently his last contract was 530k which is not too expensive, puts him in the Bautheac category but is way less of a liability (3 yellows compared to 10 yellow and 2 reds). i would be ok with him (unless there is a good foreigner on the cards)

i just looked at his stats and was surprised with his output this season, only 5 goals and 7 assists, i thought he would have been a bit better than that. watching the victory this year he was much better than previous seasons and at 30 is the right age.