Division Two of the NAB AFL Under 18 Championships won’t exist in 2017, with New South Wales and Queensland to be replaced by the four northern states’ academies with the best to represent the Allies.

For the Gold Coast SUNS Academy, it represents an opportunity to see how they measure up against the Brisbane Lions Academy, GWS Academy and Sydney Swans Academy as well as Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

The SUNS will trim their initial training squad next week as they prepare for the Academy Series, which will commence in late March/early April.

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“The Under 18s at the moment is a fairly big training squad. We’ll trim that from about 55 players to about 35-40 next week,” SUNS Academy head coach Andrew Raines told SUNS TV.

“Then we should have a reasonable squad going into some trial games, which is in about 2-3 weeks and then start the Academy Series off when round one of the AFL starts so that should be a really good lead-in to the season.

“We do a five-game series this year. No more Division Two so the Division Two states go out and we play all the other academies including Tassie and NT as full states so it should be a really good talent identification for the clubs.

“For us it’s a really important series and we want to be competitive but also put the best talent out there.”

The SUNS will start their Academy Series campaign with a clash against Queensland rivals Brisbane and the youngsters that call Metricon Stadium home are embracing the new format.

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“It just shows where we’re at, which is going to be really exciting,” Raines said.

“The boys are trying to get their heads around it and I think they’re all pretty excited but at the same time there’s always that rivalry.

“We’re competing against Brisbane round one so that’s always built up from obviously the senior level all the way down to the Academy so we’re looking forward to that.”