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The Round 16 bottom-of-the-ladder clash between Carlton and Brisbane was dubbed the ‘Lukosius Cup’ as it was supposedly a race to the bottom – and to the number one draft pick, Jack Lukosius.
It’s not the first time Carlton has been in this position, with the so-called ‘Kreuzer Cup’ for Matthew Kreuzer played between the Blues and the Demons in 2007, followed by the Melbourne tanking scandal in 2009.
I almost fell off my chair while watching On the Couch in 2012 listening to former Melbourne midfielder Brock McLean admit that winning was not a priority under coach Dean Bailey.
If winning was not the priority, then what was their priority? Draft picks perhaps? After all, Melbourne finished last in 2009 and received the number one pick.
So do we let this go on every year, giving incentive to bottom-tier teams to finish last so that they can access the best young player in the country, or should we come up with a better way to determine the draft order?
I am all for a draft system that ensures the weaker teams get priority ranking over the stronger ones when it comes to draft picks. However, this needs to be balanced with the need to remove the incentive for teams to lose games towards the end of the season to maximize their draft position.
This is my solution.
(Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)
At the end of the finals series a separate home and away season ladder is created for the purpose of sorting the draft order.
A draw should be conducted to determine the weighting for each round of the home-and-away season, resulting in each round being randomly allocated a weighting of either 1.0, 0.75, or 0.50 – in other words eight rounds will get a weighting of 1.0, seven rounds will get a weighting of 0.75 and the remaining rounds will get a weighting of 0.50.
The new ladder for draft purposes should be drawn up by multiplying the points gained in each round by the weighting allocated to the round. If two teams end up with the same points, the weighting should also be applied to the points scored for and against to determine percentage.
If I apply the above steps to the 2017 AFL season and use Microsoft Excel’s random function to assign the weighting, I get the following alternate ladder.
Interestingly, Gold Coast would get the number one draft pick rather than Brisbane.
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The main benefit of this alternative ladder for draft purposes is that it balances the need to give the least successful teams high draft picks with the need to bring a degree of randomness to the exact draft pick that a club will receive.
Therefore if a team finishes second last with two wins and the team finishing last has one win at the end of the home-and-away season, this will not necessarily be reflected on the alternative ladder – in other words the loser of the Lukosius Cup is not guaranteed to get the number one draft pick.
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