AFL trade rumours: Time to ditch the free agency compo pick

If you, like me, thought that the Monday of the second week of the AFL trade period might be the day where the floodgates opened and a wave of deals sprang forth – well, you, like me, would be wrong.

» All the trade rumours
» List of free agents
» Every trade and free agency move

Only one deal was done on Monday and it wasn’t a blockbuster by any standards, though it might be remembered in years to come as a savvy piece of business – North Melbourne securing Paul Ahern from GWS for pick No.69.

However there were two big pieces of news on the day. The first was that, despite the Hawks calling him a required player, Jordan Lewis wants to go through with his mooted trade to Melbourne. It was widely reported that he has officially requested a trade and will likely be a Demon in the very near future.

We’ve got a fascinating situation developing here at Hawthorn and it’s going be a number of years before we can really pass judgement on it. They’re giving up a lot to secure their three big targets this off-season – not just in terms of the draft picks they’re swapping, but also in terms of the players they’re moving on.

If you asked a Hawks fan which players define the club, Sam Mitchell and Jordan Lewis would be pretty common answers. They finished first and second in this year’s best-and-fairest. But they will both be in new colours in Round 1, 2017, and neither of them because they wanted to leave of their own volition.

That heaps pressure on the Hawks to make these recruitments a success. While the romantics may fret about how the careers of club legends ended, the vast majority will forgive the Hawthorn heirarchy pretty quickly if another premiership is won with Tyrone Vickery, Tom Mitchell and Jaeger O’Meara in the side.

Still, when you’re giving up this much, you want to be investing in blue-chip stocks. Tom Mitchell is exactly that – a high-quality prospect who has no significant risks attached and will play the best football of his career at his new club. Jaeger O’Meara and Tyrone Vickery however, are not.

O’Meara’s talent is undoubted but the fact he hasn’t played a minute of AFL football in the last two years makes him very much a high-risk, high-reward scenario. Tyrone Vickery finds himself among such luminaries as Colin Sylvia and Liam Jones, as the butt of much AFL humour.

If things don’t pan out and the Hawks see only one of these three recruits become a serious success, then it’ll be hard to wipe away the frowns that Hawthorn fans are wearing right now.

All the same, I say kudos to the Hawks. They’re trying something a bit different, a bit wild, a little aggressive, and very new. (Click to Tweet) Maybe they haven’t handled it as well as they could have, but if they pull it off, they’ll change the AFL landscape yet again. And if they don’t, well, at least they gave it a shot.

The Hawks and Vickery also found themselves at the centre of the other big news item from Monday which is that the AFL are putting just a very little bit of investigation into Vickery’s free agency move.

Vickery was the first free agent to move this off-season, joining the Hawks on a two-year deal that netted Richmond a second-round compensation pick in return. But, there’s some concerns that this may have been engineered behind the scenes to deliver that result.

Central to the matter is the fact that Hawthorn initially reported that they had signed Vickery on a three-year deal, before correcting themselves to say it was just a two-year deal – as if they’d had a press release set up for a three-year contract, and forgotten to update it with new details.

The worry here is the possibility that Hawthorn may have been planning to put Vickery on less money per year over three years, which would have only given Richmond an end-of-second-round or third-round compensation draft pick, but changed their offer to two-year deal at higher pay so that the Tigers would get an earlier pick and agree under the table not to match the deal for the restricted free agent.

If Richmond had matched the offer then the Hawks would have been forced to pony up a trade for Vickery and, in doing so, make it harder for themselves to land Mitchell and O’Meara – restructuring the Vickery deal to improve Richmond’s compensation would be a much easier choice of road to go down, if indeed Hawthorn were presented with that juncture.

Of course, that’s all just rumour and innuendo at the moment, a very long way from fact. However, I believe many would agree with me when I say that the free agency compensation system is dangerously easy to abuse.

Consider the first three free agents to change clubs this season – Tyrone Vickery, Daniel Wells, and Chris Mayne. All three delivered their former clubs a second-round draft pick, and in all three cases that pick was more than they would have drawn if traded on the open market. I don’t believe any of their former clubs really wanted to retain these players, for exactly that reason.

Why should a team receive a draft pick because a free agent departed? There’s no such thing as a free lunch and where that draft pick actually comes from is every other club being shunted a little further down the order. How is that at all fair?

So long as the system exists, teams are going to look to abuse it. There’s a number of changes that need to be seriously considered in terms of how the AFL manages player movement, and I plan to look at them in detail next week after the trade period has wrapped up.

When that time comes, you can be sure that dumping the free agency compensation pick will be one of my key recommendations.

Lastly, a few other AFL trade rumours:

Rhys Palmer is looking a chance to move to Carlton, likely as part of whatever deal the Giants and Blues strike for Caleb Marchbank.

Sydney’s Xavier Richards has officially requested a trade to a Victorian club.

West Coast confirmed that Mitch Brown wants to play at a Melbourne-based club in 2017.

Port Adelaide, Brisbane and Gold Coast have reportedly settled on a three-team deal to get Pearce Hanley to the Suns, which could be lodged as soon as today.