New AFL clubs need to sign big name players

 

By , 24 Oct 2009 Sam Lienert is a Roar Pro

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History suggests that if AFL expansion clubs in western Sydney and the Gold Coast are to enjoy early success, snaring established players from other clubs will not be the way they do it.

Gold Coast can spend next year trying to poach one uncontracted player from each of the 16 existing clubs to build their squad for their inaugural 2011 season.

West Sydney will get two years to do the same, both before and after their 2012 AFL debut, it was announced this week.

But, if the AFL’s previous expansion clubs, and the history of the league’s trade market, are anything to go by, neither can expect to form the core of a team that way.

Instead, it is the wisdom with which they use their priority access to the nation’s best 17-year-olds and the clutch of early draft picks they will get in the year preceding their AFL entry that will have the big say in how competitive they can be.

The experience of the two most recent expansion clubs – Port Adelaide and Fremantle – demonstrates the difficulty of attracting star players to become pioneers with a new team.

The one big-name uncontracted player the Power were able to snare for their opening 1997 season was Essendon Brownlow Medallist Gavin Wanganeen, who was made Port’s inaugural captain.

The go-home factor helped lure the South Australian, who had previously played with Port Adelaide in the SANFL.

Former Western Bulldogs star Chris Grant famously turned down a huge offer, despite the Bulldogs’ uncertain future at the time due to financial troubles.

Among the factors that convinced him to stay was a letter from a six-year-old Bulldogs supporter, who included his “life savings” of 20 cents, to help sway Grant.

Port also picked up ruckman Matthew Primus, who eventually replaced Wanganeen as skipper, but at the time it was hardly a coup, Primus a 23-year-old with one season to his name at the newly-defunct Fitzroy.

The others were Adam Heuskes, who spent just two seasons with the Power, and Ian Downsborough, who wore Port colours in seven games.

Wanganeen was the ony one of that four in the side when they made their first final in 1999, Downsborough and Heuskes having already switched clubs.

Port also traded for another eight players with AFL experience and picked up defender Stephen Paxman in the pre-season draft.

But the bulk of their inaugural squad came from their zoned access to SANFL clubs and South Australian juniors.

Of that group, 11 played in Port’s first final in 1999 and eight went on to become key members of their inaugural 2004 premiership side.

Fremantle had fared much worse when they entered the competition in 1995, despite being offered much greater access to raid uncontracted players.

The biggest name of the seven uncontracted AFL players they managed to snare was Ben Allan, the Hawthorn premiership player, who became their inaugural captain.

But he played fewer than 50 games for the Dockers.

The others were Andrew Wills, Peter Mann, Stephen O’Reilly, Jason Norrish, Todd Ridley and Brendan Krummel, with Wills the only one of the seven not originally from Western Australia.

They also traded for another seven AFL-experienced players, but of those, Dale Kickett was the only one to play at least 30 games with Fremantle.

In their efforts to pick up established players, they gave up the chance to recruit then-untried players Andrew McLeod, Matthew Lloyd, Steven King and Jeff Farmer.

The sad result was the Dockers took nine seasons to reach the finals, not finishing higher than 12th in their first eight.

The two incoming clubs will be helped by some extra cash, each having a salary cap worth $1 million more than the rest of the competition in their first season.

But AFL trading history demonstrates that even a system aimed at making it hard for the best clubs to keep the best players rarely results in the elite moving.

If they do, a big cash offer is rarely the reason.

The most notable trade move of recent years was that of Chris Judd from West Coast to Carlton, but the home state factor played a large part.

This year, star forwards Barry Hall and Brendan Fevola both shifted clubs, but only after strained relationships at their former clubs gave them no real alternative.

Port Adelaide’s Shaun Burgoyne cited family reasons for heading to Hawthorn, as did Darren Jolly, for leaving Sydney for his home state of Victoria and Collingwood.

While there will be players joining the new clubs for a pay packet far more than they could dream of elsewhere, it is unlikely to be a stampede, or the cream of the competition.

The expansion clubs’ base in non-traditional AFL states means the go-home factor that enabled the Power and Dockers to lure what players they did will not come into play.

Nor can they harness the type of productive recruiting zone that helped the Power become competitive quickly, on the back of their core group of SA youngsters.

Just two Queenslanders were picked up in the most recent AFL national draft and one player from NSW.

They will also have priority access to the Northern Territory, but that zone yields an average of just one player per year in the draft.

Which means the 12 17-year-olds the Gold Coast has been busy recruiting this year and western Sydney has the chance to pick up next year will be vital.

The nine selections each club will get in the first 15 picks of the national draft in each of the next two years will be even more so.

And with the AFL’s hopes of engaging the two markets it is most desperate to capture riding on the result, Gold Coast list manager Scott Clayton and western Sydney high performance manager Alan McConnell will want to get their talent spotting right.

© AAP 2012
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