North Melbourne are certainly a popular team for defecting AFLW players, but that popularity doesn’t seem to extend to AFL Headquarters.
The Kangaroos scored a coup in the AFLW’s expansion period, recruiting seventeen players, including big names like Emma Kearney, Jasmine Garner, Emma King and Kaitlyn Ashmore.
But then came the penalty for doing so overwhelmingly well – the AFL released the season 2019 draft order, with North relegated to a single last-pick in each round.
The Roos certainly chose the right year to enter the competition — up against Geelong, who seem to be having trouble attracting players.
With the AFLW as low-paying as it currently is, this isn’t surprising. Nearly all players have to work full time in addition to their football.
If a player’s job or study is in Melbourne, then playing for Geelong would mean either a grinding after-work commute, or finding a new job or place of study.
Either is a big ask, and most of today’s more established players — the kind that a new team would most like to recruit — can evidently find better options.
There are other reasons why North scored so highly in the expansion period, of course, the most obvious being that the Roos have a long-standing relationship with the Melbourne University team in the VFLW.
Many of their new recruits have ties to Melbourne University, having played there in earlier years and evidently enjoyed the experience, and North Melbourne are now reaping the rewards of this historical investment in women’s football.
Given how short the AFLW season is, North’s new players will possibly be spending even more time with Melbourne Uni than with the Kangaroos, so affection for the VFL club is an important factor.
Geelong have acknowledged their problem, having announced earlier that the Cats would focus on local Geelong talent — the kind of talent that already lives in the area, and may likely continue to for the foreseeable future.
Happily for Cats fans, such talent is plentiful, much of it currently coming through the Geelong Falcons TAC Cup side, which recently won the competition grand final for 10-straight wins.
Prior to the draft order being released, there was speculation that the Cats would be afforded some sort of special access to their local talent, but upon reviewing the order, it doesn’t appear they’ll need it.
Geelong have been given second-last pick in each round just before North Melbourne, but they’ve also been granted two extra picks in each of the first two rounds, right at the top of each round, for three-per-round in total.
Overall picks one and two could give them the two best players in the Victorian draft — likely Madison Prespakis and Tyla Hanks — but it makes sense that the Cats will stick with their announced policy of recruiting local players.
Given Geelong’s difficulties luring non-Geelong-based players, and the AFLW’s single-season contracts, anyone they pick not from the immediate region could just pack up and leave the next year, making it very difficult to build a stable list of players who will accumulate many years of experience together.
Conceivably the Cats could pick Prespakis, then trade her elsewhere, but the same problem occurs with the player to be traded for, particularly as the AFLW won’t allow players to be sent anywhere they don’t want to go.
Furthermore, every club loves to stir up its members with parochial sentiments, Geelong more than most, and focusing on local talent is an excellent strategy for building local support in Geelong.
Fortunately for the Cats, the top two local players they could grab with picks one and two are only marginally behind Prespakis and Hanks, those being Nina Morrison (a midfielder/forward) and Olivia Purcell (a mid).
The other best Falcon is Denby Taylor, a forward who starred in the TAC Cup Grand Final, who by my calculation will probably still be available for Geelong’s next pick at 11 (the Demons need a halfback and the Dogs need midfielders).
And again, what applies for Geelong also applies for Melbourne clubs picking Geelong-based players — picking a player whose life is on the other side of the bay is problematic.
Some may wish to leave, but clubs would be well advised to conduct extensive interviews first, because as we’ve seen, if a player really wants to go home, there’s no guarantee in the AFLW that the compensation (if any) will match the loss.
Geelong then have picks 14 and 15, likely giving them Zoe Inei (a ruck) and Taryn Love (another mid) and leaving them satisfied enough with their lineup going into next season.
No, they’re unlikely to win many games as so many of their key players will be very young, but an early pick next year should net them star Falcons halfback Lucy McEvoy, and it looks like there’s plenty more where she came from.
The Cats ought to take longer than the Roos to make an impact, but when they do, it could be a big one.
North Melbourne should still get some nice players in the draft, which appears comfortably twice as deep as last year’s, and probably deeper.
They could of course trade for a higher pick, but it would be the height of bad manners for a feel-good club to ditch someone they’ve just made all this effort to acquire, and it would need to be a very good someone for them to grab a high pick in this particular draft.
Plus, if Carlton trade their first pick yet again, after the disaster such things caused them last year, Carlton fans will riot. Given who they could get with that first pick, even Emma Kearney isn’t worth it (more on that later).
If North don’t trade for picks – well, their midfield and forward line look pretty well set, so maybe one of the Georgias at halfback (Georgia McPherson or Georgia Clarke) would do the trick at pick 12.
Even their second pick at 25 could get them a useful player, and the rest will be the one thing the Roos still don’t have — depth.
But with the lineup they’ve acquired, and particularly that engine room in the middle of Kearney, Stanton, Bruton and Ashmore, the Roos ought to be in serious contention for the premiership in their very first season, high draft picks or not.
So Roos and Cats fans should be happy, though Cats fans will need to be patient… what’s in it for everyone else?
Well, long-suffering Blues fans should be turning cartwheels, because if this all pans out as I’ve written, Carlton ought to be getting the one thing they most desperately need — a genuine star midfielder in Madison Prespakis.
For much of last season, Carlton fans were despondent that their list looked weak, and that the expansion teams would strip the draft of all the best talent before anyone else could pick.
But with the Roos punished for their wild recruiting success, and the Cats focusing on local talent, that should leave Prespakis available for Carlton at pick 3 — the team with which she already trains.
Prespakis isn’t tall, but she’s an Emma Kearney-style, physical, bustling, diesel engine of a player, and Blues fans should be excited.
As we’ve seen with the likes of Chloe Molloy and Monique Conti, the AFLW is different to the AFL in that draft picks can have a big impact in their very first year.
If Prespakis went to Carlton, she’d be among their best almost immediately. And Carlton’s second pick, number 16, should get them a good player also.
Pies fans should be happy too, and should be similarly furious if the Pies trade their pick 5, because by this calculation that should net them Tyla Hanks, who’s only a bit behind Prespakis.
AFLW clubs have to learn the lesson — there are plenty of good current players, but the best kids currently coming down the pipeline will in a few years leave most of them in their dust.
For the next ten years, coaches who trade away high draft picks for pretty much anyone can expect to lose their jobs as a consequence, and deserve it. Be warned.
As for the only non-Victorian team to suffer significantly from lost players in the expansion, don’t waste time crying into your cordial for the Brisbane Lions — this is the team that couldn’t even find space for young guns like Ruby Blair or Kalinda Howarth last season.
There’s another bunch of exciting Queenslanders about to get drafted this year, their best defender in Sam Virgo will be back from her knee injury – the Lions will be fine.
As for how this whole process will work when the Gold Coast arrives in 2020, however…
In addition to his interest in sport, Joel Shepherd is a professional Science Fiction author. You can read more by him here.
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