AFL off-season preview: Welcome to the new age

Maybe it’s a little unfair, but premiership teams don’t get much time to celebrate these days.

The Hawthorn Hawks won a third consecutive flag on Saturday, but by the time the week is out, the headlines will be dominated by what is set to be a dramatic off-season.

And what an off-season it’s going to be. Player movement in the AFL is becoming easier and easier these days and I’m confident in saying more players will change clubs in the 2015 off-season than have done so in any year before.

What is really going to make this off-season bigger and better than any in the past however is the fact that the AFL have made two major rules changes that will have a serious impact on trading and on the draft.

The first is allowing clubs to trade future draft picks for the first time, the second is the re-vamped bidding system for father-son and academy players at the draft.

In this first part of my AFL off-season preview, let’s take a look at what these changes are, and how they’re going to affect the AFL off-season.

Trading future picks
The draft has been around for a while now and it’s nothing new for the AFL to allow clubs to trade their draft picks for players – and vice versa – in the off-season.

What’s new this year is that AFL clubs are now able to trade picks up to one year in advance, giving them extra flexibility when it comes to the trade table.

Now the tricky thing here is that clubs don’t know where they’ll finish next year, or where their potential trade partners will. So, there’s a need to do some guesswork in evaluating a trade offer involving a future pick.

For those worried that clubs might sell themselves down the river looking to acquire a big name, don’t worry, the AFL has placed a number of restrictions around future pick trading.

The first is that picks can only be traded one year in advance – clubs will only have access to their 2015 and 2016 draft picks at the trade table this year, for example.

The second is that clubs can trade only either their first round pick from an advance year, or any other picks in that year.

Essentially, if they trade their first round pick from an advance year, they can’t trade any other picks from that year in advance. If they keep their first round pick in an advance year, they can trade as many of their other picks from that year as they want.

The last is that each club must make at least two first-round selections in each four year period, or they will be restricted from trading future picks.

I find this a bit too restrictive – it’s like getting a new toy on Christmas only to discover it has no batteries.

I mean, Hawthorn haven’t used a single first round pick in the last four years, meaning they would cop future trading restrictions under these rules. And are you really going to tell me that Hawthorn are doing it wrong?

I predict two things will come from the trading of future picks.

Firstly, deals will get done faster, and be fairer. The problem in the past has always been that clubs can’t get fair value for their departing players as other clubs only have so much value to offer – now, with more picks on the table, you can expect more reasonable deals to be done more quickly.

The second is that eventually, a lot of those restrictions will fall by the wayside as clubs cogitate for more and more freedom in terms of their list management.

Father-son and academy bidding
In days gone by the father-son and academy bidding system was pretty simple. Up until last year, clubs that had access to players under either rule simply had to nominate them ahead of the trade period.

The other clubs in the league would then have the chance to bid one of their up-coming draft picks on said player, and when/if they did, the club nominating them would have to reserve their next available pick in the draft after the offered pick to draft their nominated player with.

This all took place before the trade period even started, in order to prevent clubs from trading away their high picks and getting highly rated father-son or academy players for peanuts.

Pretty simple right? It worked, but came out with a few inequities, like Melbourne managing to snag Jack Viney as a second-round pick, or the Sydney Swans picking up a top talent in Isaac Heeney for a late first-rounder last year.

The new bidding system is supposed to be a lot fairer, and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that it’s a lot more confusing.

First of all, the bidding will not take place ahead of the trade period, but will instead most likely take place live at the draft, meaning that clubs will be able to use picks they’ve traded in to bid on or pay for players.

Secondly, each pick is now given a ‘points value’ that determines what that pick is supposedly worth on the open market. Pick 1 is rated as being worth 3000 points, ranging down to pick 73 which is worth just nine points, with pick 74 and any picks after that effectively considered worthless.

So, during the draft, when their pick comes up, if a club wants to bid on a father-son or academy player, they’ll have the opportunity to do so.

The club that has nominated that player then has a choice to make on whether or not they will pay the price. Essentially what they need to do is use their remaining picks in the draft to make up the points value of the pick being offered by the bidding club.

Now, there is still some bargain-basement available pricing for the clubs who have father-son or academy prospects nominated.

If the bid is made in the first round, the club with the nominated player only needs to match the points value of the bidded pick minus 20 per cent.

If the bid is made outside the first round, the discount will be an automatic 197 points, the same as the discount would be for pick 18, the last pick of the first round.

That means that for players bidded on from pick 56 onwards the nominating clubs will be able to use their last pick of the draft.

Did that make a lot of sense to you? I’ll be honest, I explained it and it still confuses me a fair bit. To make things a bit clearer, here’s an example of how a bid might pan out on draft night.

Sydney have a highly-rated kid called Callum Mills who will join them as an academy prospect this year. Let’s say that Melbourne decide they will bid their pick 6 on him.

Pick 6 is worth 1751 points under the AFL’s points system, and the Swans need to pay that, minus 20 per cent, in order to match the bid. That’s 1401 points they need to pay.

The Swans’ first pick is at 14, and is worth 1161 points under the AFL’s points system – that means that if they want to match the bid for Mills, the Swans will have to give up more than just their first round pick, which is all they would have had to pay under the old system.

The Swans’ next pick is 33, worth 563 points, meaning the two picks combined are worth 1724 points, more than enough to match the bid. In fact, they’d have 323 points left over, meaning rather than giving up pick 33 entirely, it simply slides back to the appropriate place in the draft order.

Under the AFL’s points system, it would slide back to behind pick 46, which is worth 331 points, meaning their pick 33 becomes pick 47.

Essentially, instead of giving up only their first round pick to secure Mills, the Swans give up both their first round pick and are forced to downgrade their second round pick – forcing them to pay a higher price, and, hopefully, lowering Eddie McGuire’s blood pressure.

If clubs don’t have enough points value to match a bid, they can still get their player – but they will go into points deficit for the next draft, which will automatically downgrade their picks next year. Unless of course they’ve already future-traded them. See where it gets complicated?

It probably seems like a classic AFL rule change, and it is. Aims to make things slightly fairer, instead just makes things a thousand times more confusing.

But, it will also make the draft a lot more interesting, as when to bid on father-son and academy players suddenly becomes a lot more tactical than it has been in the past.

It will also have an impact on trading. Greater Western Sydney for example have two academy kids coming through who are likely to attract top ten bids, Jacob Hopper and Matthew Kennedy. To pay for them without going into points deficit, they’re going to need to seek out some extra draft picks, which will no doubt prove to be a major factor in the Adam Treloar trade.

If you’re scratching your head, don’t worry. I was doing the same thing when the bidding system was announced. But before long this will become part of the fabric of the off-season, and we’ll all be nervously waiting to see which rival club decides to bid on our next generation of stars.

Welcome to the new age.

Tomorrow: My focus turns to the free agents of 2015. Will they stay? And if not, where are they going?