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We’ve had a ton of fun covering the AFL free agency and trade period here on The Roar this year, and to wrap up my own personal involvement I’d like to bring you six things this year’s silly season showed us we need.
We had laughs, we had debate, we had plenty of banter. I had a bad cold for most of the second week and fever dreams so wild that one morning I woke up 100 per cent sound in the belief that Nat Fyfe had overnight been traded to Essendon.
I guess what I’m saying is, it was a memorable time.
My thanks to all the readers who tuned in for our coverage and got involved in the comments. I hope you enjoy these final thoughts before we move on to the fixture tomorrow, and then the draft in November.
More clarity, and freedom, around future picks
The decision to allow clubs to trade future draft picks has facilitated much more even deals and added a new element of risk into trading that just makes the whole thing more fun to observe.
However, the concept needs a tune-up. At the moment, the rules regarding whether or not clubs are allowed to trade future picks lack specificity.
The biggest example of this has only recently come to light, as it was revealed that Hawthorn traded both their first and second-round picks in the 2017 draft this year – something that was thought to be illegal.
The AFL ‘interpreted’ a rule that it itself wrote a little over a year ago, saying that because the Hawks had traded in a 2017 second-round pick from another club, it was allowed to trade its own 2017 second-round pick despite the fact it had already traded its own 2017 first-round pick.
Confused yet?
There were also headaches over Geelong’s ability to trade out their 2017 first-round pick, given that they had already traded out their first-round picks in the 2015 and 2016 drafts.
Clubs are supposed to take at least two first-round picks in every four-year block, or lose their future-pick trading privileges. But does this mean that clubs cannot put themselves in a position to not have two picks every four years? Or does it just mean that once they have done so, only then are they penalised? The AFL is yet to clarify.
Let’s cut all these corollaries and put more power in the hands of the clubs. Tell them you can trade as many future picks as you like, and if you wind up screwing yourself over, don’t come crying to Gillon.
Not only would it be a lot simpler, but I suspect it would further enhance the benefits that the future-pick rule already offers to trade time.
No more free agency compensation picks
I won’t go into too much detail on this one as I already talked about during the trade period itself.
Ever since free agency was introduced, I have been a believer that there should not be compensation picks in the process.
In the years since it came about, we have time and time again seen clubs exploit free agency so they can attract a compensation pick of higher value than they would otherwise have received.
Pick 3 to Melbourne for James Frawley, pick 23 to Fremantle for Chris Mayne – clubs can’t be blamed for taking advantage when those kind of wildly over-value rewards are on offer.
I would make the free agency compensation rule function in the same way as the priority pick rule – awarded only at the AFL’s discretion, and only in very serious circumstances.
A meaningful difference between trades and free agency
This is another topic that I have hit upon once or twice before, so I won’t put you thought too much of it here.
However, something needs to change as far as a player’s ability to nominate a club of choice and refuse all other considerations.
It essentially turns trading into a slightly more complicated version of free agency and there’s really no sense in having both of them if they’re going to be essentially the same thing.
During this year’s trade period, Nathan Hrovat received offers from both Carlton and North Melbourne, and told his team, the Western Bulldogs, he’d be happy to be traded to whichever they could strike a deal with.
That is the attitude that I would like to see more of – a player who wants a trade realising that they are not a free agent, and have to work with their current club and their potential new club to find a solution that benefits all parties.
Either more time, or less
Once again this year we saw trades only trickle through over the first days, before we finished with a flurry of action in the last five hours.
It’s not a great system. As a result we had eight trades supposedly submitted in the last 16 minutes, the details of many not revealed until more than an hour after the deadline.
That just opens up way too many questions about the AFL’s conduct in and around trade period, especially when we find out as per the Hawthorn news that some trade details were incorrectly processed and reported by the AFL.
It’s often said that if trade period was only three days long, no less trading would get done – and that’s probably right, though there might be a few more small-name players walking to the PSD.
Alternatively, trade time could be made much longer – it could stretch from the end of the season until the night of the draft, and even include live trading during the draft itself.
I’m not sure which of these approaches would be better – I’d probably favour the latter – but I suspect either would be an improvement over what we have now.
Pre-trade education and counselling
If the AFL is willing to put professional mediators in with Hawthorn and Gold Coast to talk through a Jaeger O’Meara deal, maybe they should’ve been willing to put them in with O’Meara and Gold Coast months, even a year before to see if the relationship there was reparable.
More players are seeking trades these days than ever before. For many of them it is the right decision, but for some, it’s not. The AFL should do more to educate players about the repercussions of seeking a trade, and perhaps even counsel wantaway players to make sure the choice they’re making is right for them.
What disturbs me a little is how many players are seeking trades very early in their careers. These guys are 19, 20, 21, and are as good at making major life decisions as you and I were at that point in time (not very). Their main sounding boards are their managers, who stand to make a tidy profit from helping them move clubs. Does that seem right to you?
A little more honesty
Just a quick one to close things out, but how sick are you of getting fed the party line and nothing else by clubs during trade period?
It’s clear to anyone and everyone that Sam Mitchell was traded away from Hawthorn to make salary cap room, and yet the Hawks have refused to sell it as anything other than ‘doing the best thing for Sam’.
Your fans aren’t that dumb, Hawthorn.
If you don’t have the guts to tell us the real reason you’re doing something, then don’t do that thing in the first place.
That’s not too hard, is it?