Linsanity: The future of trading and free agency in the AFL

To say that Lin Jong’s would-be clandestine visit to the Collingwood facilities was the biggest storm-in-a-teacup I’ve ever seen in the AFL would be far from accurate. It didn’t even crack the top ten.

It was really quite bizarre for two reasons, the first being that Collingwood would target Lin Jong at all. Do they really feel the need for another tough midfielder with an average kick? Maybe Derek Hine and company just don’t have enough to do during this time of year.

The second being that, when the news was made public, so many in the AFL acted as if this was shocking or surprising at all.

The AFL industry has this strange obsession with pretending it is something it’s not, with maintaining an image that everyone who has followed the game long enough knows does not reflect reality.

The AFL has strict rules saying that clubs cannot make contract offers to the players of other clubs during the season – it doesn’t want to be seen as a league where these deals are done at any time outside the trade period.

Yet, this is exactly what happens. Clubs, often prominently, approach players mid-season. Geelong’s delegation sent to meet Travis Boak in 2012 probably the most brazen example in recent memory.

We know that Lance Franklin and Patrick Dangerfield were already in discussions with their future clubs as much as an entire season before they moved.

The AFL never cracks down on this. When Damian Barrett says ‘Club X’ has given ‘Player Smith’ an offer of so many dollars over so many years, the AFL doesn’t seem to investigate the deal to see if its rules are being broken.

Not publicly, at least.

Player managers and clubs are smart; they toe the line expertly without ever crossing it. They follow the letter of the law while not even slightly following the spirit of it, making the law itself little but a flimsy pretence.

In that context, the notion that a player like Lin Jong, on the fringe of a top eight side, might meet with a club interested in recruiting him and offering him more playing opportunities, is as believable and mundane a story as you will come across this season. If it wasn’t for the AFL’s obsession with the pretence, it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

My question then is, why not do away with the pretence altogether? Allow the AFL’s player market, which is quickly becoming something of a free market, to operate publicly.

There’s no doubt that the modern AFL player is more aware of his options to move to another club than at any other point in the past. More players moved clubs last off-season than in any off-season previous, and that is a trend that’s been developing for a number of years.

We as footy fans are all about the passion – that’s what this game is to us. And when we see this movement happening, we ask, where’s the loyalty? It’s a nice idea, but players aren’t fans. They can’t live on loyalty alone.

Footy is their passion but before that it is their career. They must make the right call for themselves and their families, even if that call goes against what the purists would like to see happen.

See, for example, how Bulldogs players poked a bit of fun at the story after the fact by giving Jong a Collingwood jumper at training. For all the drama that goes on in the media, I suspect the vast majority of players have no ill-will towards their mates if they seek a trade for the betterment of their careers, because they’d probably do the same thing if they were wearing their shoes.

Free agency has been responsible for much of this increased player movement. While the actual number of free agents moving clubs has actually decreased a lot since it first began, it has altered the general vibe of player movement to the point where players feel more free than ever to explore their options.

In other sports, free agency is a very different thing from trading, but that’s not necessarily the case in the AFL. In the majority of US Sports, teams trade players whether the players like it or not, for their own purposes and designs, while free agency instead gives the players the chance to decide where they’ll play. It’s in the name.

However in AFL culture, players have to agree to be traded and the vast majority of trades begin not with a club looking to move a player on, but with a player asking to leave. Both trading and free agency effectively become the player’s domain, more or less the same thing but with slightly different rules. Trading in the AFL is not about trying to reach a deal with another club, it’s about luring another club’s player away and then low-balling the club until they give up and make a deal.

This has led to a worrying trend where players effectively behave like they are free agents even when they’re in the very early stages of their careers. Take a look, for example, at the 2013 AFL draft.

The players taken in the top 10 in 2013 have only been in the game for two and a bit years. But by the end of the 2015 trade period, already three of them – Tom Boyd, James Aish, and Nathan Freeman – had moved clubs. Cam McCarthy, taken at pick 14 in the draft, would’ve joined them if it was entirely up to him.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

And in the case of Boyd and Aish, in particular, these were the moves of players acting like free agents before their time. They were drafted to clubs where they didn’t really want to go, and never seemed to show any intention of staying long term. They both took the first train out of town without so much as a goodbye.

Again, one can’t really blame the players themselves for making the decision that is right by them. It’s their life and career, and if they’ve got the ability to move to the club of their choice, why not exercise it? But it is a worry for the AFL, because it makes a mockery of the idea of a draft when players are effectively free agents from a year or two in.

To make this system work, I’d argue that free agent-like status is something that players need to be made to earn. To do this, the AFL would need to give clubs license to trade players as they see fit, without needing to seek the player’s consent. Clubs can’t make them stay if they’re out of contract, but if they don’t want to sign, the club can trade them to whatever destination they like for the best deal they can get.

The AFLPA is already making noise about reducing the free agency limit down to six years. Six years would seem fair enough but only if players accept that for the first part of their careers, where they play isn’t really up to them. It’s up to the club that decides to draft them, and what they decide to do with them after that.

Six years in, players have paid their dues, and they’ve earned the right to move on their own terms if they want to. There’d be a bit less bitterness. Fans seeing players depart would know that the player at least gave a decent chunk of their careers to them, or that they were getting a good deal in the trade rather than being held to ransom.

It’s not going to happen, of course. The culture of our sport is just not geared towards this. I can’t imagine the AFLPA ever accepting a proposal that would see players give up their right of consent to being traded.

That’s fair enough. Can you blame right now a young player who winds up at an under-performing club, and worries they won’t give him the tools he needs to succeed? Or one who winds up at a GWS, and knows they’re way down the pecking order of young talent?

An average career of 90 games is played by AFL players. Careers tend not to span into a decade. They probably should have a right to make a move, and hopefully make the best of their careers.

This problem facing the AFL is an open one. There is only so long that they can go on pretending that the draft will deliver equality and that clubs don’t try to poach players during the season, while the private and public behaviour of AFL clubs and their players makes it plainly clear this is not the case.

One thing is clear – the AFL’s player movement landscape is very much a work in progress. It is very different now to what it was ten years ago, and it will be very different again in another ten years’ time.

In the meantime, let’s all agree – fans, coaches, media, players – to quit beating around the bush and putting out the faux outrage when tales like this emerge. Surely any genuine surprise from news stories like this died out among the dedicated followers of the game a long time ago.