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AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou addresses the media during an AFL Media Conference at AFL House, Melbourne. Slattery Images
While it’s a historic agreement, the AFL’s free agency model is also very complicated and has overlooked its most important function. It still fails to allow big name players to move freely between clubs.
For such a professional sport I would have thought a more professional outcome would have been achieved. How hard is it for unrestricted free agency to be implemented?
If the clubs are smart when free agency is introduced at the end of season 2012, they will easily be able to retain they’re elite players because of the restricted component to the agreement.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the fundamental elements.
The agreed model will see delisted players, and players with 8 years service to one club as unrestricted free agents, allowing them to move clubs if uncontracted. But only if they’re outside the top 25% of paid players at the club.
Players of 8 years service who fall inside the top 25% will be restricted. Meaning before the most highly paid players can move, their original club first has the chance to match any offer made by another club in order to retain them. If the player is still adamant on leaving they then must nominate for the national draft.
This is how the free agency model is failing as it gives the clubs too much power over players who have worked so hard to be at the top of the money tree. Free agency is designed to allow a player his choice of destination but this model is doing the opposite, if a player wants to leave but the club matches the offer, they have to enter the national draft which is a complete lottery.
It’s important to remember clubs are also restricted by the salary cap and the draft. But the AFL believe they’ve reached a balance between increasing the choices available to players, greater flexibility for clubs to manage their lists, all whilst taking into account the interests of members and supporters.
The AFLPA originally wanted just four years service at a given club before free agency kicked in, now they’ve agreed on 8 years and with a restricted component.
What kind of a soft negotiation by the player’s body is that?
Clubs losing a player will be compensated with national draft picks, under a formula taking into account the player’s salary, age, best and fairest record and position they were initially
drafted. The exact details of just how this will be formulated though are still to be determined.
Another problem is going to be adjudicating the top 25%. The AFL is yet to finalise the details of exactly how this will be done either. But I can guarantee you the player agents will argue their players are outside the 25% while the clubs will be arguing the player is inside the 25%.
Two clubs have already been granted a temporary form of free agency with the Gold Coast able to lure up to one uncontracted player from each existing club this year and Western Sydney both next year and in 2012.
This opens the door to yet another dilemma for the AFL.
2010 is set to become a poaching frenzy for the Gold Coast franchise as it attempts to lure uncontracted players to the club. Other football codes readily accept player movement mid-season, but the AFL has until now been able to avoid such an attack on its moral fibre.
By all means players should have the right to move clubs at seasons end when uncontracted, and now to some degree are able to do so through free agency, but jumping ship mid-season is in my mind a form of treachery.
Making matters worse, the specific players are unknown to the media and the football public. Speculation is rife the league’s 17th team is not only talking to potential recruits but has drafted a document of consent for players to sign if they choose to pledge their allegiance at seasons end.
How many players have not only been targeted but secretly signed confidentiality agreements?
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