Let's have a mid-season rookie draft

James Podsiadly of Geelong celebrates a goal during the AFL Round 06 match between the Geelong Cats and the Richmond Tigers at Skilled Stadium, Geelong. Slattery Images

Both Jason Akermanis and Matthew Lloyd have used their respective newspaper columns lately to spruik the idea of a mid-season draft. On the back of VFL recruits James Podsiadly and Michael Barlow thriving at AFL level, it’s worth exploring the idea – without getting carried away, however.

Lloyd went as far as suggesting players should be able to leave their present clubs and partake in such a draft. But this misses the point a tad.

While such a system would benefit players like Adelaide’s Tyson Edwards, who played his last game on the weekend but arguably has more to offer, it does open up a can of worms.

If top-line AFL talent are able to participate, it could create a mid-season free-for-all not too dissimilar to trade week or the Luke Ball saga that played out last off-season. Just think what it would be like having a player like Edwards announce he’s on the market – clubs will start circling from all directions.

Also, in a league where it’s foreign to have players announce during the season they will be playing for another club later on, the idea it could become such a huge part of the structure of the season is a bit hard to comprehend.

To paraphrase another Aker column, I’m not sure the footy world is ready for it.

No, the real purpose of any mid-season draft has to be to assist the clubs and players from second-tier competitions. Not only because this would create a safety net for clubs hit by multiple injuries, but also because it opens up another recruiting pathway.

To make the system fair, any mid-season draft would have to be another rookie draft, not a direct avenue to a senior list position. That way, any picks won’t add to the number of players a club is eligible to play and the long-term injury list becomes a factor, as this list determines how many rookies a club can play.

Such a method shouldn’t rock the foundations of the season too much, and it does seem fair enough.

After all, just look at Hawthorn’s ruck stocks this year. At one point they only had one genuine ruckman able to be selected, through no fault of their own. They looked at a number of ruckman during the off-season and ended up bringing in Wayde Skipper, who ended up injured himself.

It was just sheer bad luck they ended up with such a depleted ruck division, so why should they be punished for that?

With so many injuries, it would be great to have them able to enter a mid-season draft and bring in a guy like 27 year-old Orren Stephenson, who trained with the Hawks in the pre-season and is considered the best ruckman in the VFL.

For other clubs, VFL players like Myles Sewell and Matt Little have been talked up as AFL prospects. So too have WAFL players like Ian Richardson and Andrew Krakouer.

But there are probably a number of other names you could throw up, especially if you had an entire recruiting team at your disposal.

The interesting part of this debate is that had such a draft been in place last year, there’s an incredibly good chance Podsiadly would have become an AFL player sooner than he did.

Think back to this time last year and where Geelong’s key forward stocks were at. Tom Hawkins was coming along slowly and Cameron Mooney had his much-publicised problem with the “yips”. It was considered their big weakness. Meanwhile, there was this big bloke in the Cats’ VFL team absolutely dominating.

Obviously, at some point last year the club put two and two together. Who’s to say that point wasn’t prior to the middle of the season? Who’s to say he couldn’t have helped them in their ultimately-successful premiership tilt?

And who’s to say a mid-season draft wouldn’t have made Podsiadly an AFL player even before last year?

In this age of expansion clubs and compromised drafts, clubs are looking to utilise every possible recruitment pathway available to them. Opening up another of those pathways, through a mid-season rookie draft, would only help this.

You might say clubs have an entire pre-season to get their list, structures and game plan all in place, but during the course of a season things go awry. Cracks appear. Injuries occur. It’s inevitable and very hard to plan around.

So maybe it’s time to give the idea of a mid-season draft a go. At least in some capacity.