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It’s supposed to be one of the most important means of equalisation. Just like communism, it seems like it should work in theory, but when you try and apply it to the real world it never seems to work properly.
Equalisation has long been one of the major buzzwords surrounding footy, and we are constantly told that the AFL is serious about narrowing the eternally growing schism between the big clubs and the small clubs.
We all know how the draft is supposed to work. The teams at the bottom of the ladder get the highest draft picks and, as a result, priority access to the best young players in the country, which will accelerate their rise up the ladder.
While all this is happening, the teams towards the top of the ladder will slide as they are left to scrounge for whatever talent they can find with their lower draft picks.
Despite this ideal, it seldom transpires in this manner. Collingwood have played finals every season since 2006 and Geelong is about to enter its eighth-consecutive finals series, while the Demons will not feature in September for the ninth-successive season.
How is such a trend able to take place when the system is deliberately set up with the primary objective of preventing such an occurrence?
The simple answer is that the draft system is imperfect. Although the lowly clubs receive priority access to the elite young talent, they do not always make the right decisions regarding which youngsters to bring into their club.
To back this up, sixteen out of fifty players drafted in the top ten from 2005 to 2009 are either no longer with the clubs that drafted them, or out of the AFL entirely. That is an unexpectedly high number, especially considering that top-ten draft picks are meant to provide the foundation upon which successful teams are built. This is where the stars are meant to be found.
Furthermore, part of assembling a successful team requires that late draft picks are not wasted. You may draft your stars in the top ten, but a premiership team is always made up of more than just its stars.
Solid depth is the key to victory, and it is in the later rounds of the draft that a team is truly built.
There will inevitably be at least one or two diamonds in the rough in each draft that will have recruiters kicking themselves. Matthew Stokes (pick 61, 2005), Justin Westhoff (pick 71, 2006) and Michael Walters (pick 53, 2008) are only three recent examples.
These are players who, for one reason or another, slipped to the later stages of the draft and have since far outperformed their draft standing. If each of those drafts were redone today, all three would go in the first round.
There is a trend emerging. Each of the aforementioned bargain picks were made by Geelong, Port Adelaide and Freo respectively, three of the teams that occupy the top five positions on the ladder at the moment.
In fact, while trawling through the drafts of 2005-2009, there is nothing more striking than the fact that highly successful late-round picks are important components of teams that find themselves in the top half of the ladder in 2014.
Melbourne fans can attest to the ambivalent nature of the draft. The Demons had a total of four top-five draft picks from 2007-2009. Only two of the players selected with these picks, Jack Watts and Jack Trengove, remain with the club.
Other top 20 draft picks made by the Demons in this time yielded Sam Blease, James Strauss, Jordan Gysberts and Luke Tapscott, none of whom are currently regulars at AFL level. It would be fair to say that these failed drafts have set the club back by a number of years.
Of the 21 recipients of the Rising Star Award since its inception in 1993, only eight have been drafted in the top ten of the National Draft.
It all goes to show that no matter how much effort and preparation a recruiting department puts into the draft on a yearly basis, it is nothing more than a crapshoot. Like any form of gambling, it is possible to win big, but it is also possible to lose out completely.
High draft picks often provide the only glimmer of hope at the end of the season for supporters of struggling teams, who desperately yearn for a saviour to make all of the losing worthwhile.
However, pinning the hopes of a whole fan-base on the idea of an unproven eighteen-year-old can end up being a fallacy.
It is clear that the draft can no longer be relied upon to act as the basis for a truly equal competition.
It is unrealistic to expect something that has shown itself to be such a fluky proposition over the years to provide parity to the AFL. It’s time to think of something else.
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