Geelong star and AFL Players’ Association president Patrick Dangerfield has canvassed the prospect of a mid-season trade period in the league.
This week, a whole host of players in the NBA shifted clubs, capped off by the Kevin Durant’s trade to the Phoenix Suns.
Immense interest in the trade period led Dangerfield to pose the idea of a similar system in the AFL, which currently only has a mid-season draft.
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“Given the NBA trade deadline and the extraordinary interest in it. Is it time to introduce a mid season trade period in the AFL. Helps rebuilding clubs, teams often pay overs to acquire talent.. Players in the AFL always have the final say and are never traded without consent..”, he wrote.
Accompanying Dangerfield’s tweet was a poll on the matter, with the majority of voters opting for ‘yes’.
It’s not the first time Dangerfield has weighed in on the matter, with the premiership player and Brownlow medallist expressing his view midway through last year.
“I‘d love to see, at some stage, mid-season trading come in,” Dangerfield said on SEN at the time.
“We see it in other codes globally, it certainly adds another layer of intrigue.
“I don‘t necessarily buy the argument the art of list management (will suffer), I think it adds to the challenge of list management if we were to add a layer of mid-season trading in.
“It‘s not something that we’ve engaged in a huge amount of discussion around as a PA, simply because there’s been so much on.
“I think broadly we‘d be open to it.”
Outgoing AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan is another powerbroker who is supportive of the idea.
“I (could see a mid-season trade period) happening soon,” McLachlan said on SEN’s Whateley last year.
“I’m quite a traditionalist, whether people think that or not. Great players staying with their clubs is something I like, so let’s put that stake in the ground.
“You can have one-club players, but also (players that change clubs) in the middle of the season. For me, greater flexibility in list management has been resisted for a long time.
“We pushed through the mid-season draft and everyone thought it was outrageous, and now players (are coming in) and having an immediate impact.
“The mid-season trade period would (have the same impact), there are very good players who are not getting games at clubs that would make a difference to (another) team within a season.
“It makes no sense to me that you can’t facilitate that.”
