When the AFL draft was introduced, the underlying objectives were to make the competition fairer and more equal.
Today, as the AFL begins the task of repairing the draft, this mechanism for distributing players is failing to fulfil its basic mission. It is neither fair nor a system that genuinely equalises as it once did.
It is also unnecessarily complicated. The points system – which was supposed to be fairer and to give a market value for bids on father-son picks and academy players – has been ruthlessly exploited and is a kind of legitimised rort. It is also incomprehensible to the majority of fans and makes for the dullest “sports” broadcast since the Sydney to Hobart.
Some of the first-round draftees from 2023. Credit: Getty Images
Nick Daicos is the game’s best young player and has been instrumental in delivering Collingwood a premiership. Daicos, as a result of this arcane points/bidding system, was acquired for a raft of picks (38, 40, 42, 44) that wouldn’t fetch you a second-string key defender in a genuine auction.
The same applied to Jamarra Ugle-Hagan, bid on at pick one in 2020 as the AFL’s best kid, but picked up by the Bulldogs as a Next Generation Academy (NGA) recruit at the kind of price that would barely land a B-grade midfielder at the trade table; ditto for Sam Darcy (Bulldogs) and the Brisbane Lions’ Will Ashcroft (both father-sons).
The points system is broken and seems likely to be revamped, in what is an overdue change. Teams should pay a price that is closer to the reality of what a player is actually worth; gun players shouldn’t be acquired with crappy later choices.
The price that West Coast put on the rights to this year’s No.1 pick Harley Reid demonstrates the Grand Canyon between what these young academy/father-son stars are worth and what their clubs are paying in these heavily compromised drafts, under the current mess.
The Eagles were offered three first-rounders – including at least one early first-rounder from North, Hawthorn and Melbourne – for the rights to Reid, but didn’t bite.
The AFL has to continue with the northern academies, which are essential to the expansion teams – Gold Coast especially – and to Sydney and the Lions. The question is how the bids for the best of those local players should work, and how this can be done in a way that a) doesn’t weaken those clubs and b) is as fair to the other 14 clubs as possible.
The Brisbane Lions and the Swans are much stronger than the Suns and Giants and, unlike the newest teams, they have access to father-sons as well. It is possible that the AFL should have a different model for the expansion academies.
Another major problem that the last draft exposed: the lack of players that metropolitan Melbourne is producing; from a population of five million, there were only five Vic Metro kids drafted on the first night (picks 1-29). Gold Coast’s academy yielded four on the same night, from a population of 700,000. Rather than moaning about Gold Coast’s advantage – and they still haven’t played finals yet after 13 years – clubs should be asking whether something is rotten in the Victorian heartland that, historically (counting the country) provides more than half the talent.
“Teams should pay a price that is closer to the reality of what a player is actually worth”
For more than a decade, the AFL has controlled what it calls “a variable funding model” in which GWS, the Suns, the Lions and then the weaker Victorian teams receive far more dollars than the powerful clubs, headed by West Coast, Collingwood, Richmond and Hawthorn.
Now, without ever announcing a policy change, the league has presided over a “variable draft” in which it has different rules for different teams.
So, North Melbourne have been pumped up with extra draft capital and the northern market teams can match bids – which, again, are cheap – at any point in the draft.
The draft concessions awarded to North were arbitrary and did not follow a set formula. What was really going on? The AFL recognises that the Roos do not attract free agents or mature top-shelf recruits at the trade table in the same way that Geelong, Collingwood, Richmond, Essendon and Carlton can; hence, they need an injection of draft capital to square up a structural weakness.
The underlying problem is that, even if you equalise the salary cap and football spending, clubs that play before 80,000 in marquee matches – or have a geographic stronghold like Geelong – hold more appeal to players than those from the smaller teams and especially GWS and the Suns.
But, in seeking to redress these issues, the AFL has stealthily eroded the essential premise of the draft, which was to distribute players, based on ladder order, to ensure that every club gets a chance to compete and contend.
The new draft, one of Andrew Dillon’s first reforms as CEO, must recognise that the draft cannot function properly when teams are getting the cream of the crop without genuine sacrifice.
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