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Picture this: it’s the 2016 AFL Draft. Essendon have just taken Andrew McGrath at pick No.1, defying what was the expectation for much of the year that goal-kicking midfielder Hugh McCluggage would be the first pick.
Greater Western Sydney hold pick No.2. They spent a large of currency in the off-season trading up to this pick – they dealt pick No.7 and Cam McCarthy to Fremantle for an upgrade to pick No.3, and then give the Brisbane Lions a ripping deal to move up to No.2.
The Giants wanted McGrath, and they wanted him bad – but it wasn’t enough.
What to do? The Giants, for whatever reason, don’t really seem to want McCluggage. And they could take the next player on their board (in reality, they did), but they’ve got such an excellent depth of young talent that they don’t really need to, per se.
Or… they could trade it. Live at the draft.
They’re on the clock – ten minutes to either make a deal or pick a player. They let it be known that the pick can be had (but it cannot be had cheap). Expect a flurry of activity in recruiting rooms around the country.
Will Adelaide throw up their first picks this year and next in order to secure the A-grade midfield talent that could be the icing on a premiership cake?
Or maybe North Melbourne make the hard decision to sell the Giants their reigning best-and-fairest winner, Robbie Tarrant, knowing they badly need an injection of classy young talent.
Whatever happens, as the clock ticks down, it’s enthralling viewing. And absolutely none of it is narrated by Jason Dunstall.
Before this year’s draft, I engaged in my customary ritual of watching that classic movie Draft Day.
All things considered, it’s not actually that good of a movie – Kevin Costner really just puts on a clinic about how to do a really bad job of running a football team (not to mention getting along with your mother, your pregnant girlfriend or your new intern).
It’s basically a two-hours-long ad for the NFL – and yet, it’s the only movie out there for us draft nerds, so on the telly it goes, every November.
The NFL draft has so much more theatre compared to the AFL edition. There’s live trading, of players and picks. There’s a massive crowd. There’s even a league boss who, remarkably, doesn’t look like he had two valium and a glass of warm milk before the whole thing started.
The AFL Draft is never going to be on as big a scale as that of the NFL – we have 14 fewer teams, for example, and radically less interest in under-18s football compared to the interest in college football in the States.
However, there’s no reason why we couldn’t spice things up a bit with the addition of live trading. It’d drag the draft out a bit – probably make it a day-long event – but the drama that comes with live trading would bring a level of popular interest to the draft that just isn’t there right now.
Unfortunately things would have to radically change to make the trading of players possible on draft day – clubs would need license to send players wherever they want, otherwise there just wouldn’t be time.
While we are still remarkably without a CBA for 2017 and beyond, that doesn’t seem likely to be one of the changes made when it finally gets announced.
Still, even just the trading of picks would make things a bit more interesting. Especially if we opened up clubs’ license to trade future picks a bit – surely we can extend it out two or three years in advance and trust clubs not to ruin their own futures?
If we can let Melbourne be the Melbourne they were for a decade or so pre-Paul Roos, surely we can let Richmond trade away multiple future first-rounders for whichever washed-up Carlton player is next on their shopping list?
At the 2017 AFL Draft, let’s have a live crowd, live trading, and a live CEO. What do you say, Roarers?