Barellan coach Peter Green to help establish football academy in Riverina

The former Carlton footballer is in the middle of a move back to the region where he will return to where it all began at Barellan.

Green is moving back to the family farm but has also unveiled his new venture that he wants to help the next generation of Riverina footballers, boys and girls, prosper.

Green will be the head coach of the academy that is being overseen by highly-regarded development coach Wayne Oswald.

Green wants to bring to the Riverina what he's been involved with in Melbourne.

"I'm already doing it down in Melbourne. We did kids down here in Melbourne, boys and girls, that want to improve and develop their footy," Green said.

"We get them in and work on, not so much their skills, they've got to have a level of skill already, it's more those kids that are wanting to improve their knowledge and understanding of the game and how they play.

"Learning to own their own training too is a big one. We'd find that kids would have no idea going up in the levels of the intensity they need to train at."

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Entry into the academy will be by application. It will run for 15 to 18-year-olds to begin with and will start in coming weeks with the plan to run four sessions before Christmas at Barellan.

"It is going to be separate to Barellan, it will be separate of which clubs in the area will be able to benefit from," Green explained.

"Regardless of me coaching at Barellan, I wanted to establish it there because it's central and the northern Riverina kids will have access to it as well as the south west kids.

"Even for coaches that want to participate or learn, understand or get better at their own craft, I'm very open in terms of sharing that information and knowledge that I've been able to accumulate down here being in Melbourne so long."

Green said the main aim of the academy is to help young Riverina footballers get better.

"As I've always said about the Riverina kids, and I put myself into that when I was coming through, there's nothing wrong with the talent and the ability up there, it's the lack of knowledge that they have in terms of what they need to know to be able to go to the next level, whether that be at a VFL level, AFL level, SANFL level, even O&M level," Green said.

"They're lacking that knowledge base, I see it in the way that they play up there. Compared to the kids I work with down here and it's just through what they've been taught or not been taught.

"We've had a lot of success with it down here. The kids just lap it up. It's learning through action.

"We find rather than just talking to the kids, getting them with ball in hand and going through the motions at doing the training that they learn where they need to position themselves, how they need to make space, how to move the ball better with us giving instructions as they're going through the training, which then increases the level of intensity for it and the kids can see the improvement they get out of it."

The academy also plans to use the latest in technology to assist the program.

"We're going to be bringing some AI, I've just invested in an AI camera that records the training," Green explained.

"We've got this app that we've developed where the players can have their own profile within that app and we can upload of his vision of training or games and we can overlay the feedback onto that. They can see exactly what we're asking them to do or where they need to be working and improving on."

Green said the initial feedback from parents has been strong, hence his decision to kick off sooner rather than later.

He plans it to run similar to Barellan and District Netball Association's successful representative program.

"We think it's a very positive way of helping kids improve and develop their footy, whether they've got AFL aspirations or not, it's irrelevant, we just want to teach kids to get the best out of themselves, in which clubs in the area will benefit from that," he said.

Applications for the academy should be made to rivacademy@outlook.com

Applications will then be assessed before invitations are offered.

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