Agreed, unless we do the same here.
A US style college system could work for us too, they might not get the same amount of money but they will still be in Australia.
And with reduced team sizes we might even be able to pay the guns in excess of 2 mill year. That alone would keep them away from most Australian based sports, surely?

They do this now though.

What if he had a chance of getting a sports scholarship and played in the feeder league then got drafted a proven mature gun. Tim Kelly like.
As we know, some of these guns at under 18 don't always become guns in the AFL.
You just have to look back at previous drafts and see how many top 10 picks haven't quite lived up to their potential.
That's huge risk for clubs that use valuable, picks, money and effort to go into a non AFL proven player.

No matter what way it goes there will always be players that fall through the cracks too.