If Jack Bowes is traded to Geelong, with the Cats also gaining the prized pick seven in the national draft, the deal will represent a worrisome watershed in the competition’s history.
Geelong won the premiership and have missed the finals once in 16 seasons. The Suns are yet to make the finals in their dozen, largely dismal years of existence.
Gold Coast midfielder Jack Bowes.Credit:Getty Images
The draft and salary cap are socialised measures designed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, invented to lift lowly teams up and undercutting, if not levelling, empires such as Geelong’s.
Yet, it is the premiers who have the salary-cap room to take Gold Coast’s salary-cap dump and acquire Bowes, who, whether he chooses Geelong, Hawthorn or Essendon, is less valuable to those clubs than the high draft pick that is attached to him, in a buy-one-get-one-free deal.
Fans of other clubs will be watching Gold Coast’s decision and wondering how the heck the Suns have ended up offloading a former top 10 draft choice – an academy player from Queensland, who clubs rated highly – and giving up a draft pick that is of considerable value and worth much more than an average player.
To gain Bowes and pick seven, the vendor must also pick up his contract, which amounts to more than $1.5 million over the next two years. He comes with a major string attached, since many clubs can’t afford to take on a player who hasn’t been in the Gold Coast’s starting midfield at that price, even if they covet the pick.
It is remarkable that Geelong, despite an unmatched run of success since Joel Selwood’s arrival in 2006, can take on the excessive Bowes contract (which resulted from the Suns pushing money back to get under the salary cap). It is less surprising that Hawthorn and Essendon are in that position, given their ladder positions and age profile.
What should concern the AFL – Gillon McLachlan’s successor, most of all – is how the Bowes deal lays bare that expansion teams are nowhere near parity if they have to compete with the same set of rules as Geelong, Essendon, Hawthorn, Richmond, Collingwood, West Coast and so forth.
Greater Western Sydney operates under the same grim circumstances, or worse, than the Gold Coast, in that they have been forced to pay close to a million dollars a season for four players – Stephen Coniglio, Josh Kelly, Lachie Whitfield and Toby Greene – and for terms of at least six years.
The Giants and Suns are caught in a cycle of losing players, whom they have little choice but to overpay based on their high draft position; hence, the Giants are giving up Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper (albeit they have too many inside mids) rather than Coniglio or another older player on a hefty contract.
The Suns are making this radical step of the salary dump for a high pick, in the knowledge that: a) Bowes isn’t on the fringes of their best side; b) he’s on too much money; and c) they have to offer clubs something enticing to get them to take on his contract. The AFL recently amended the rules to allow such dumps.
The Suns’ view is that the value of that salary-cap space is greater to them than the draft pick. This is a logic that applies only to the expansion teams, given that the Swans and Lions have been established for long enough to retain players for closer to Melbourne market rates, even though Sydney (and GWS) lost their cost-of-living allowance in 2014 post the Buddy Franklin signing.
As a trade, Bowes will attract less media interest than Brodie Grundy or Luke Jackson’s moves. But it is far and away the most significant trade in what it tells us about the AFL’s two-tiered competition.
Geelong, with their lower cost of living, local players (17 if Ollie Henry and Tanner Bruhn get there) and coastal/country lifestyle, are operating in a completely different stratosphere to the expansion teams. Ditto, to a lesser extent, for the other clubs that are pursuing Bowes.
Having succeeded in equalising the competition on most measures, where the 17th and 18th clubs are concerned, there isn’t a level playing field.
