Suns' staggering list management own goal sees star poached by Kangaroos

Yeah, too true. They definitely need to move on from misusing the word rookie though. Before Covid, the NEAFL were going to give non-AFL clubs rookie lists for U19s that had missed out on getting drafted. I think the AFL were going to try it out before taking it to all comps. Every VFL, SANFL, and WAFL club should have access to this kind of list for undrafted rookies and get to upgrade them to the senior list should they merit selection.

Context is always very important, B1. Scott Clayton drafted Will Brodie and Rodney Eade was coach at the time. A year later there was a new List boss and new coach, neither of whom could really find a position for Brodie long term. You talk about development and you're not wrong, but there are mitigating circumstances. Firstly, with his first year, they identified that he didn't have much of a tank and couldn't play enough minutes, so they kept him in the NEAFL a lot to get him right. Hi idol as a kid was Mick Barlow, so they had him running around in the NEAFL to mentor him in his second year, with some impressive results in the back half of the year. However, in 2019, he was only fit to play 6 NEAFL games and 8 AFL games, which wasn't ideal for his third year, although he showed signs averaging 22 disposals, 5 tackles and 5 clearances. Then in 2020, he couldn't get more than 1 game because there was no reserves comp, only scratch matches. This season, after an underwhelming opening 3 rounds, he finally got a good block of VFL in, averaging 30 touches and 6 tackles, but again the disrupted season robbed him of continuity. You'll probably say I'm full of excuses, but the narrative that the Suns don't properly develop their players is old and tired. It used to be true back when the gym was in a steel unairconditioned shed, but it is no longer the case. If you want to see the lie to the claim, take a look at Touk Miller, a player taken mid-second-round who has developed into one one the best players in the comp (every count except the Brownlow had him scoring top 3 to 5). Freo paid $600K to get Brodie and pick 19, while giving the Suns cap relief and draft capital in the future. There is no real loser. Freo had cap space and needed a pick and a player. Will Brodie followed the Dockers as a teen. The Suns now have money to extend their A-Grade youth. It's win-win unless you want to see it as a disaster to fit your narrative.

Stats and research gave you that outcome? He wasn’t in your best 22 all of a sudden (once he’d signed on with North) ? The curve ball hit you straight in the forehead and you can’t admit it Guru Thom. I can’t wait for round one 2022.

That sounds interesting, Thom - probably a bit too radical for AFL house though!

I actually think it was a deliberate strategy on the GCS part. He was on $400k per year and they needed the money to re-sign a number of others on a very full list. I think they were happy to keep him but also dangled him out there in case someone wanted him, and North took the bait. I don't see this as any different to the Swans not signing George Hewett. Good player, but not a great one.

Stephen Silvangi :laughing:

Read all about it. David Noble’s wife was the one who first saw that Greenwood had been delisted. it has been widely reported. I was referring to that in a sarcastic way. You are the one who read smut into it. Says more about you than it does about me.

Irrespective of whether the Suns were made a list management mistake and were keen to re-rookie Greenwood or are actually now happy to have him off their books, it will be interesting to see if other clubs now try to use this ploy of delisting a contracted player with the commitment to re-rookie him when they'd really like to move him on and hopefully have him snapped up by another club.

I feel like Hugh Greenwood is the bride in this story. The family agreed the couple shouldn't see each until the wedding, but she had her head turned on her Hens night and ran off with the circus.

I'd like to see the draft and free agency overhauled altogether. Flip the drafts so that the rookie draft is where first time nominees can be selected, where they stay for 5 years before entering free agency. The senior list should be for all players graduating from the rookie list and players traded-in. Free agency needs to be earlier, after 5 years and with a transparent compensation system. Your idea of a supplementary list is great - but hitch it to VFL/SANFL/WAFL and go higher than 45 players. Delisted free agency is fine as it is, but along came a mercenary player and a trade period predator to paint it in a bad light. It works to keep players agile in player movement periods and serves as a tool for clubs to keep their options open. Hand in glove with the PSD, which I hear Rory Thompson has nominated for, players out of contract can leave a club they no longer wish to continue with. It isn't perfect, but the AFLPA won't give it up.

I'm impressed by your ability to see it from a number of angles because the media are treating it as though it's Adam Treloar 2.0 when it is really a case of backing the favourite each way and it running a place. The Suns lost a player they had wanted to keep, plain and simple, but when he agreed to go for the big payday at Norf they instead got an extra list spot and $400K. The delisting of contracted players is allowed because otherwise it binds clubs to keeping players they don't want around, but unless the player has breached the terms of the contract the club still has to pay the player out. If a second club comes along and poaches the player then they have to pay the same or more than the amount the player is already contracted to. The player might agree to a conditional contract, as it seems the case here, such as performance bonuses and 3rd year extension triggers. North have offered similar money to the Suns, but added a year and agreed to front end the contract. He'll get $500K a year for 2 years, then either walks or gets a 3rd year at only $250K. All up he's between $450K to $850 better off, but who knows what manoeuvres he'll pull next. This is the 3rd club in a row that he's walked out on. The Suns have a unique Total Player Payments and salary cap situation. They had 50 players on the list last year compared to some clubs with 43 and a fair number of their rookies were on reasonable contracts having been delisted and put on the rookie list. The extra rookies don't cost extra per se as rookie contracts are counted outside the salary cap (unless they are more than $80K, the extra goes into the cap), but with vets on the rookie list and some backended contracts, the Suns needed to trim the fat over the trade period, so losing Greenwood means banking his salary. TPP accrues when injuries mount because rookies and lower-end list players have performance triggers in their contracts that can be worth $4K a game, so once the Suns had 10 best 22 injuries their extra TPP bill was costing around $40K a match. That's Greenwood's salary and more by season's end. So now Touk's been extended and the club has about $2 million net more to spend over the next 2 years once INs and OUTs are balanced, although the Miller deal gobbles up a chunk of that and the rest will be moved around to front-end players so they can give Izak Rankine, Jack Lukosius and Ben King massive pay rises. Selling Will Brodie and pick 19 for a couple of mid-draft picks and the Greenwood "disaster" saved the club $1 million and keeps the A-Graders at the club until the premiership window opens.

The logic of this Suns move confuses me. If the Suns intended to redraft Greenwood they were clearly not making a decision to toss him and therefore there was no salary cap benefit unless he was being redrafted as a rookie which would earn a salary cap discount . But press reports suggested he was going to be retaken at the lower end of the national draft. That would also have used up a draft pick. One not very convincing reason is that because every club must draft 3 players the Suns maybe only want to draft one or two rookies so they can make meagre savings on entry level salaries. But that seems small return on a gamble. I’m also puzzled at why the AFL allows the delisting of a player who has contract time to run. Surely such a contract has to be legally paid out and is regardless captured by salary cap rules. The cynic in me suggests Gold Coast might have decided post the trade period that Greenwood is too expensive for what he offers and essentially put him on the open market, dangling him as a delisted free agent. In that case the risk was not that another club picked him up - but that no other club was interested. If that’s the case the Suns did ok. If I’m being really cynical I might even hypothesise that the Suns were aware North Melbourne might be interested.

Nah…there aren’t enough Suns fans to provoke.

I don't know why they still call it the Rookie List. They should change the name to 'Supplementary List' so it actually describes what it's used for.

Am not! You are!!!

Thom Roker doing some serious damage control COPE in these comments :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

I couldn't believe he kept writing that! Is Thom 12 years old?

I think you’ve analysed the situation fairly well. Setting aside the Suns’ list management stupidity (this should never have happened in the first place), there’s no doubt Greenwood will be missed in the middle this coming season but I don’t think the gap between him and the next guy (Bowes, Fiorini etc) is as large as people make it out to be. There is no-one in the squad that offers the same level of physicality but, with ball in hand, there are quite a few better midfielders in the squad. As for Hugh himself; I don’t think you can blame him for looking out for himself and his family’s future. I’ve heard it reported that there are easy to achieve triggers for Hugh to get a 3rd year with North so he’s effectivelly swapping the uncertainty of a 1 year deal for the certainty of a 3 year deal with more money on an annual basis. I don’t know how you can blame a guy for that. edit. Spelling

Absolute rubbish! You are the one refusing to acknowledge their own double standards.

You're being absurd. Do that less.