Win flags, not trades: What Richmond's rivals need to learn before the 2019 AFL trade period

The Richmond Tigers are premiers in 2019, for the second time in three years, and deservedly so.

The Giants were more nail than coffin even from the early part of the third quarter, and fans of 17 non-yellow-and-black clubs, most certainly including myself, began letting their minds wander towards the AFL’s trade period, which kicks off this Friday.

One of the common complaints of the league of course is that we allow our premiers too little time in the sun before turning our attenion to trade period – today, I’ll try to make room for both.

There are many good reasons why Richmond have won the flag, but one of the most fundamental is good list management. What can their rivals learn from their success? I’ve boiled it down to five lessons.

Lesson one: Respect the draft
Let’s face reality for a moment: in the AFL, the trade period is always going to be much, much bigger news than the draft, simply because we’re already intimately familiar with the players involved.

One of the flow-on effects from that is that landing a big trade – or even a medium-sized one – generates more headlines and sells more memberships than making wise and intelligent draft choices.

This is a major factor explaining the rapid growth of activity in the trade period over the last decade. In 2008 just six players joined new clubs during the trade period, ten years later, we saw just shy of 50 change colours in the 2018 exchange.

Don’t, however, let this fool you into thinking that the trade period is becoming more important to the success of AFL clubs than the draft, or even rivals it.

The draft still accounts for the vast majority of players on every AFL list and it’s where the core of every premiership team is built. Richmond are no exception – if anything, they prove the point.

Richmond’s success over the past three seasons dates back to four drafts over 2006, where they took in five first-round selections and used four of them to draft Jack Riewoldt, Trent Cotchin, Alex Rance and Dustin Martin.

Three of those players would be absolute locks in the AFL team of the decade and the fourth is a Brownlow Medallist and two-time premiership captain.

This isn’t to say that the draft is foolproof. The other first-rounder Richmond had during that time was spent on Tyrone Vickery. Not every pick will be a winner.

But no club could bring in that caliber of talent in that period of time for that price by focusing on trades – you have to go to the draft, and you can’t be successful unless you do.

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/AFL Media/via Getty Images )

Lesson two: Be patient
This is, for mine, where most clubs fall down in their attempts to build a list that can experience premiership success.

Many are willing to spend a few years collecting talent at the draft, few are willing to wait for that talent to mature.

Let’s reiterate again that the last of those four players – the Big Four at Richmond during this era of success – was drafted in 2009 – a full ten years ago, and eight years before they won their first premiership.

The first, Jack Riewoldt, was drafted 13 years ago.

Getting an elite core through the draft is one hurdle to jump over, putting the right pieces around them is an entirely separate task, and one that too many clubs look to skip.

In that same four-year period Richmond also drafted Shane Edwards, David Astbury and Dylan Grimes, but more importantly they spent the following six seasons mostly staying quiet in trade period and continuing to add draft talent to their list, even if sometimes to the frustration of their fans.

Over this period of time they picked up future premiership players in Brandon Ellis, Nick Vlastuin, Kamdyn McIntosh, Jayden Short, Jason Castagna, Kane Lambert, Ivan Soldo, Daniel Rioli and Nathan Broad.

None individually is the reason why Richmond won this premiership, or that of 2017. But take them collectively out of the side and the Tigers would be nothing but the perennial frustration they so long were.

What AFL clubs and fans must learn from Richmond is that this is how long building a premiership list takes: it’s not a three-year plan, or even a five-year plan. It’s a decade-long commitment, minimum.

Lesson three: Don’t judge yourself on wins and losses
This is one that works in two directions. If a club looks just at their wins and losses from the season past as a guide to which trade move they should make next, they run the risk of overrating or underrating themselves.

Richmond’s best example of this is 2016. It was a nightmarish year for the Tigers, who after three straight years in finals dropped to 13th on the ladder with just eight wins for the year.

Despite this, Richmond were poised to make their biggest trade move in a decade – they had spent the year pursuing Gold Coast’s Dion Prestia, who requested a trade to the club. The mooted price was pick six in the draft.

Pundits outside the club took a glance at the Tigers’ ladder finish and said Richmond were not in the right position to pay such a price for a trade recruit.

“To target Prestia now… It’s not the right call, they’re not in the premiership window,” said noted AFL opinion-haver Kane Cornes at the time.

“They really should be looking over the next two or three years to acquire as many top-20 picks as they can however that has to happen,” said player manager Scott Lucas.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Those inside the club knew better. They knew they’d drafted an elite core that was about to come into its prime, and they knew they had put in years at the draft to get the right support for that core.

They knew that, despite what the results of 2016 might suggest, they had a list that was nearly ready to contend for a premiership.

They backed in their own internal judgment of where they were at, and history has vindicated them twice over.

The other way to go when it comes to judging yourself on wins and losses, of course, is to overrate where you’re at, and look to add the final piece to a list that still needs more than one.

That leads to another lesson…

Lesson four: Don’t trade for trading’s sake
Fully half the clubs in the league pursued and landed a big fish during the trade period last year, but only two of them – Tom Lynch at Richmond, and Lachie Neale at Brisbane – delivered their sides any serious upward momentum.

Why does this happen? Sometimes it’s just a case of bad luck – maybe a big recruit gets a poor run of injury with unfortunate timing.

Steven May or Jesse Hogan, for 2019 examples, could arguably be placed in this category – at the very least, we need more time to judge.

However, more often it’s because the club hasn’t adequately completed that process of building through the draft just yet.

They have some of the pieces but not all of them, and landing a big recruit only gets them some, not all, of the way there – and paying the high price of a big trade will probably make it tougher to fill in the gaps still remaining.

Or perhaps sometimes a club is in the right position to look for a big trade recruit, but the perfect fit simply isn’t there, and they take who they can get rather than waiting for the right player to really make them better.

Smart trades broadly fall into two big categories – big trades for quality players who fill your needs, only to be done when the time is right, and small trades for players who will cost just about nothing and are worth rolling the dice on.

If you look at the five players in Richmond’s 22 who started at different clubs, they fit well into these two categories.

Tom Lynch, Dion Prestia and Josh Caddy were all elite talents who fit a specific purpose on Richmond’s list – Lynch to take the pressure of Riewoldt, Prestia and Caddy to add midfield depth and hardness.

Caddy has gone on to be All Australian, Lynch was unlucky not to do the same this year, Prestia may win a best-and-fairest in a premiership year. All three have had an impact worth paying for.

Toby Nankervis and Bachar Houli, on the other hand, are players Richmond paid almost nothing for, but have proven canny pick-ups. You don’t win all of these, you don’t even win most of these, but the price is right.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Lesson five: Don’t be afraid to take roll the dice
The most important thing to understand while we have our hindsight goggles on is that despite Richmond’s success, they have hardly been exempt from making list management mistakes.

They took Ben Griffiths just a pick before Fremantle selected Nat Fyfe, and Ben Lennon just one selection prior to Carlton picking up Patrick Cripps.

They traded a first-round pick for Chris Yarran, who never played a game for the club.

But that’s OK: you don’t need to get it right all the time, it’s pretty much impossible to. And if you somehow do, you’ll wind up with far more talent than you could fit in the salary cap!

Every draft decision is a risk and every trade is a risk, and even something that’s 70 per cent likely to work out is going to fail three out of ten times.

The trick instead is to make it up on volume – commit and stick to a long-term strategy that will see you make such a large number of decisions over time that if you have anything resembling a decent hit rate, you’ll wind up with a solid overall result.

Dustin Martin at pick three was once considered a risk, while Marlion Pickett and Sydney Stack (although he unfortunately didn’t play on Saturday) were in the same boat.

Daniel Rioli as a first-round selection was known to be something of a roll of the dice. The Dion Prestia trade, certainly, was every chance to backfire horribly.

For every one of these players who has worked out, Richmond could point to numerous selections they’ve made that didn’t. The reason it has worked is they’ve spent long enough looking for diamonds in the rough to actually find some.

In the end, successful list management boils down to time and tenacity – having the patience needed to stick to a strategy over the ten-plus years it takes to build a list worthy of an AFL premiership.

Richmond have done exactly that, and been richly rewarded. They didn’t let any single decision make or break them, but consistently made wise choices over a long period of time.

The big question for the off-season to come, then, is this: are their rivals smart enough to follow their example?