2018 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel

[chuckie]

I posted the below comments just after Christmas in 2017.
I met up with the same Calder Cannons person this week and I ask him about our draft picks and he said that Rowbottom is a gun and will play seniors in 2019 and rated him much higher than Florent when we drafted him. He also said the other draftees are pretty good, i asked him about Ling and he was pretty keen on him as well.

I spoke to a person who works with the Calder cannons over Christmas and he said that we have a good player in Ben Ronke.
They thought he would have been picked up late in the second round of the draft not as a rookie.
He reminded him of the year Luke Parker got drafted, early that year he was expected to go top ten but kept drifting.
He could be an outside chance of the Papley role.
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[707]

Doesn't work when you pick up James Frawley and then have to stump up points the equivalent of the pick 3 that Melbourne received. Frawley was never worth that, Tom Lynch was.

FA distorts equalisation because as we've seen most FA go to the better clubs who pay nothing for them and it also dilutes the draft because innocent clubs have their picks pushed back due to the compo picks.

There should be a reduced points price (say 50% of the compo pick value) to pay if you pick up a FA that has created a compo pick. In effect, if you are pillaging a player from a low ranked club, the compo pick will be higher placed, you'll pay more points penalty to get that player. But that wouldn't get past the ALFPA as it may reduce the options a FA has when seeking to move clubs, he AFLPA is the fly in the ointment here not the bumbling AFL.

[liz]

Doesn't work when you pick up James Frawley and then have to stump up points the equivalent of the pick 3 that Melbourne received. Frawley was never worth that, Tom Lynch was.

FA distorts equalisation because as we've seen most FA go to the better clubs who pay nothing for them and it also dilutes the draft because innocent clubs have their picks pushed back due to the compo picks.

There should be a reduced points price (say 50% of the compo pick value) to pay if you pick up a FA that has created a compo pick. In effect, if you are pillaging a player from a low ranked club, the compo pick will be higher placed, you'll pay more points penalty to get that player. But that wouldn't get past the ALFPA as it may reduce the options a FA has when seeking to move clubs, he AFLPA is the fly in the ointment here not the bumbling AFL.

Or you just abolish compensation picks altogether.

The only justification I can see for compensation picks is to provide some protection to clubs in the situation the Suns find themselves in - in a cycle of losing high quality players (whether through FA or trades) because they can't establish themselves as a competitive force (and to some extent because they are located in an outpost). I'd rather see compensation picks abolished but greater use of the AFL's discretion to award priority picks to teams in extreme situations.

[Ludwig]

Or you just abolish compensation picks altogether.

The only justification I can see for compensation picks is to provide some protection to clubs in the situation the Suns find themselves in - in a cycle of losing high quality players (whether through FA or trades) because they can't establish themselves as a competitive force (and to some extent because they are located in an outpost). I'd rather see compensation picks abolished but greater use of the AFL's discretion to award priority picks to teams in extreme situations.

I agree with this approach to free agency, but it will only exacerbate the problems with the northern clubs, particularly the Suns. Priority picks would be some relief.

What the AFL should have done is grant NGA zones to struggling clubs, even on a short term basis, instead of giving them to clubs that don't need assistance. This would expand the access to quality players to clubs struggling to retain players.

The bigger problem now is players demanding to be traded before they enter free agency. Something has to be done to stop this.

[liz]

The bigger problem now is players demanding to be traded before they enter free agency. Something has to be done to stop this.

I completely agree with this. It's the primary recruitment/retention issue that needs to be addressed. If the Suns had had more protection against losing players like O'Meara, Prestia and Caddy well before those players earned the right to free agency, Tom Lynch and Steven May might have been more inclined to stick around. I wrote a couple of my long, rambling posts earlier this year suggesting how this could be addressed and I'm not going to repeat all that again. But there are some viable ways the AFL could seek to redress the balance that can be applied to all clubs (not just selectively to those they judge need help), but that, in a practical sense, would most benefit the clubs most at risk.

I don't agree with your comment on the selective awarding of NGA academies. If the AFL is going to have academy systems they need to be structured to encourage long term investment in a pool of players, whatever the criteria of entitlement to those players are. The goal surely has to be to increase the total available talent pool, not merely to act as a distortion in the way an existing pool is allocated. The entitlement/bidding system is a distortion but its effects shouldn't be as objectionable if the primary objective of growing the talent pool is achieved.

[Boddo]

Agree with a lot of what Liz has written except I think one thing is missing and to me it’s a massive issue.

It’s that the change from the AFL running junior development in the northern states to northern academies highlights how bad the AFL are at running junior development in this country.

And the knock on effect is with them running junior development they try to structure a lot around churning out draftees and then ignore the health of the game as a whole, perfect example is Tasmania.

Which brings up the issue of should the AFL or clubs be running academies throughout Australia?

Lastly just on the idea of regularly changing zones I believe it wouldn’t work and would open a new can of worms. Struggling clubs could end up developing a player and years of time and resources put into him only to see their zone taken off them just as they’re about to draft the player.

Imagine the time and effort put into Josh Rayner by Sydney over the last five years only to see Carlton have access to him next year. This would almost certainly happen and then you’d find clubs under resourcing their zoned area and try to just cherry pick when possible.

[barry]

I think its fairly simple.
An academy is an AFL club aligned program that is used to
- Entice players who have traditional pathways to other sports already entrenched. (ie, area's where AFL is not No.1 code)
- Leverage the local club presence by including them in the pathway (priority given to playing for club in same location/state by points bidding and discount)
- Only available to clubs who have a significant go-home factor to contend with. (NSW,QLD). This can be quantative. ie. in place until 2/18th of all AFL players are from NSW.

This would exclude NGA's. NGA's should be run by the AFL, not clubs.

[liz]

'They were my No.1 preference': Draftee happy at Suns - AFL.com.au

This article suggests that Jez McLennan was a player the Swans had in mind when they traded back into the second round of the draft, but that the Suns were just as keen and motivated them to trade with West Coast for the first pick on day 2. I'm not sure I'd take the musings of a draftee or his manager as gospel that the Swans had him in their sights but there may be some truth to it.

It's obviously impossible to project forward to know how any draftee will develop but, just on type of player, I'm glad that the Swans used that pick on a contested midfielder, rather than a medium sized, running defender (not least because the club spent several of its later picks on medium sized running defenders/wingmen).

[S.S. Bleeder]

Another problem with free agency is that it further strengthens the attractive Victorian clubs (Hawks, Blues, Bombers, Pies, etc). 80% of the players that are drafted come from Victoria yet Victorian clubs only make up 55% of the clubs.

Almost all free agents use the system as an opportunity to return to their state of Origin. It's very heavily weighted in the favour of these clubs for free agency players to return to them. It just so happens that these players have just or are just starting to hit their straps when they reach free agency and the big Victorian clubs get them for absolutely nothing.

As a result, the northern clubs in particular, are being used as development clubs for the big Vic clubs.

On top of that we now have a siruation where all clubs have academies, in fact I would argue that the NGA academies are advantaged because they have a larger and higher quality pool to draw upon.

The system is massively flawed but the AFL will do nothing about it because the big Vic clubs bring in the dollars. They don't care about equalisation. It's all about income.

[S.S. Bleeder]

'They were my No.1 preference': Draftee happy at Suns - AFL.com.au

This article suggests that Jez McLennan was a player the Swans had in mind when they traded back into the second round of the draft, but that the Suns were just as keen and motivated them to trade with West Coast for the first pick on day 2. I'm not sure I'd take the musings of a draftee or his manager as gospel that the Swans had him in their sights but there may be some truth to it.

It's obviously impossible to project forward to know how any draftee will develop but, just on type of player, I'm glad that the Swans used that pick on a contested midfielder, rather than a medium sized, running defender (not least because the club spent several of its later picks on medium sized running defenders/wingmen).

I agree. Why would we want another half back when we already have plenty of them and we are desperate for inside midfielders?

I'm certain that we had a particular player in mind when we trade up to pick 26. I'm just not sure that Rowbottom was that player given that he wasn't expected to be in that range.

[S.S. Bleeder]

I agree with this approach to free agency, but it will only exacerbate the problems with the northern clubs, particularly the Suns. Priority picks would be some relief.

What the AFL should have done is grant NGA zones to struggling clubs, even on a short term basis, instead of giving them to clubs that don't need assistance. This would expand the access to quality players to clubs struggling to retain players.

The bigger problem now is players demanding to be traded before they enter free agency. Something has to be done to stop this.

The go home factor is a massive issue. The best thing the AFL could do would be to invest in the development of AFL in NSW and Qld. It's a long term solution but it's the only way that the four clubs, and the integrity of the competition, will survive.

[ugg]

I’ve heard from a Brisbane supporting friend of mine that we were keen on Ely Smith who went to the Lions at pick 21. Given he is a similar type player to Rowbottom, that might have some validity to it