AFL to rethink priority picks

[ScottH]

AFL to rethink priority picks (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12849145%255E11088,00.html)
Possible changes include widening the qualification period from one to up to three years and pushing priority picks back to between the first and second rounds in the draft. Makes a lot of sense. A team needs to be consistnetly poor to gain a priority pick. Means that the Bombers won't get one if they fail this year!!

[Matt79]

Great to see there may be a rethink on this issue.

I just feel that when sides are definately not going to make the 8, there is too much incentive to let games slide and finish as low as possible to get a priority pick.

I would much rather finish 14-16th then just outside the 8. Makes better sense in the long run but it is not good for the game.

[j s]

Why not apply the rolling three year period to the normal draft order as well. That way a club that keeps doing "ok' (say 10-12) would most likely end up with higher picks after three years of mediocrity than they would now - assuming that other clubs fluctuate around them.

Another possibilty is to use a weighted ballot for first draft round - weighted so that the lower your ranking the more likely you are to get the first pick. Weighting could use points won rather than just positions to give really crap teams (like Swans 92) a virtual guarantee of first pick.

The priority picks could also be thrown into the ballot so that they would end up somewhere during the first round instead either before or after it.

A ballot could be structured ('rigged' if you like) so that a team could not end up with a pick more than a certain number (say 3) of places above or below their ranking position (ie the minor premiers could not get a pick higher than 13, wooden spooners no lower than 3).

A possible weighting algorithm (put forward as an example only of the possibilities):

Take the premiership points won in each of the last three years.

Multiply the most recent year by 2.0
The year before by 1.5
The first year by 1.0
(the weighting is so a team on the slide will do better than a team on the rise)

You'll get a number betwen 0 (no games won at all) and 396 (every h&a game won).

Subtract this number from (say) 400 to get the actual ballot weighting (ranging from 400 to 4). To increase (or decrease) the difference between bottom and top raise the number to a power (eg square it to increase, square root it to decrease).

The possibilities ae endless but you get the gist.