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Free agency needs refining to bring equity to the AFL

Gary Ablett is back in Round 15, and ready to play his 300th AFL game (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Roar Rookie
30th May, 2017
19

Many have voiced concern about the proposed changes put forward by the AFL Players Association that would widen free agency.

In particular, the proposal which would enable players with four years’ club service, whose salaries are either at or below the median salary, to qualify for free agency.

There is still a school of thought that free agency has ruined football. Young players are holding clubs to ransom, loyalty is dead and all that.

But the idea of free agency remains a good one that just needs refining, and the new collective bargaining agreement should enable that.

Let’s remember how the system is supposed to work. The two main equalisation measures of the AFL’s player movement system are the draft and the salary cap.

This is what works in the NFL in the USA, always the most appropriate comparison to our league mainly because of the number of players on a list or roster.

In the AFL, restricted free agency kicks in after eight years and unrestricted free agency after ten. And the draft has compensation picks for free agents (this happens at a low level in the NFL) and academy/father-son picks.

In the NFL, free agency comes earlier and rookie contracts are longer, and this is what should happen in the AFL.

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While Brisbane struggle with a number two pick who doesn’t want to sign a contract after his initial mandated two-year rookie contract, it becomes clear that rookie contracts for top-end picks should be longer.

The AFL could also stop a lot of this movement by placing a ban on players being traded after their rookie deals. If a player is desperate to move under this plan, they should re-enter the draft.

Free agency should come sooner though. Players at the eight-year or ten-year mark are almost certainly thinking about their football mortality and are desperate to win a premiership. Think about the movement of James Frawley as an example of this.

If free agency came sooner, players may think more about earning potential and less about premierships, and this is what we want the system to achieve.

The problem with this logic is that under current arrangements the difference in salary between a successful club aiming at a flag and a lower club with oodles of cash may not be that much. The decision may be between yearly salaries of around $100,000 a year.

History shows that when the differences are significant, such as when Gary Ablett went to the Gold Coast and Tom Scully went to Greater Western Sydney, money talked. The difference between $500,000 a year and $1.5 million a year was simply too much to pass up, so premiership considerations were put to one side for the almighty dollar.

This is exactly what the salary cap is meant to do – be a pseudo talent cap. The salary cap just needs to be higher – much higher. We need our players to get paid significantly more money than they currently receive.

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If a player after six years and 100 to 130 games of service for a club qualifies for free agency and simply takes the most attractive offer financially, the system will work more like it should work.

Couple it with longer rookie contracts and a possible prohibition on 20-year-olds naming their destinations in trade discussions by making them re-enter the draft, and the AFL may get closer to a truly equitable competition.

But they’ll probably never get there while we have academies, and the father-son selection, with its reliance on a former great’s ability to sire a son.

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