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The AFL Trade Period is done and dusted – and after a slow start, it certainly lived up to the hype!
A whopping 36 different players found new homes, with every single club bringing in at least one fresh face, be it via a swap of picks or free agency.
We saw one of the biggest trades in history – at least by the volume of moves associated – with Jason Horne-Francis and Junior Rioli heading to Port Adelaide as part of a four-club mega-swap that also saw the first three draft picks change hands.
And as is the AFL’s wont, a serious amount of the biggest moves went right to the deadline, with Josh Dunkley, Rory Lobb and Ollie Henry managing to pull off a full 10 days of speculation, rumour, innuendo and threats before finally changing hands. In Jaeger O’Meara, too, there was a final-days bombshell as well to salivate over.
But everyone knows only one team can ‘win the trade period’*… so who was it this year?
Here’s your official Trade Period wrap, where I rank every team’s performance from 1 to 18.
You can probably guess the top few teams, and last is a no-brainer- but who fills the rest of the spots?
Let’s find out.
*everyone does in fact not know this
IN: Jacob Hopper (GWS), Tim Taranto (GWS)
OUT: Nil
2022 Draft Picks: 53, 63
The first big surprise out of these rankings – I reckon the Tigers, if anyone, ‘won’ the trade period.
Yes, they gave up two top-20 picks this year and their first-rounder next year. But in Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper, they got in return two midfield bulls who could and in all likelihood will go a long way towards fixing the Tigers’ most pressing issue – winning the ball out of the centre.
Throw in not even needing to trade backup ruck Ivan Soldo and Jack Graham taking one look at Port Adelaide and deciding the half-forward flank at the MCG actually looks quite nice after all, and the Tigers come out of this trade period having ticked every box they wanted to tick heading in, and lost nothing in return they couldn’t afford to.
Bravo.
Grade: A+
IN: Jack Bowes (Gold Coast), Tanner Bruhn (GWS), Ollie Henry (Collingwood)
OUT: Cooper Stephens (Hawthorn)
2022 Draft Picks: 7, 58, 64
Imagine winning a premiership and then a fortnight later getting THREE young players who were all first-round draftees, and pick seven thrown in to boot.
The Cats were always going to be near the top of the list, so let me save some time and explain why they’re not at number one.
Unlike the Tigers’ pair of inclusions, none of Bowes, Bruhn and Henry look likely to move the needle all that much in the immediate future. Bruhn will surely struggle to get a go straight away in one of the deepest midfields in the competition, Bowes might get a gig at half-back if he’s lucky, and if Ollie Henry couldn’t get a game ahead of Ash Johnson at Collingwood, he’s got a big summer ahead of him to impress.
But that’s nit-picking; the Cats brought in three potential future staples in their best 22, instantly put to bed any lingering ‘old folk’s home’ gags, and gave themselves an exceptional chance of netting local gun Jhye Clark with pick 7 in the draft.
Even by Geelong fans’ high standards, this last fortnight has surely been as fun as footy gets.
Grade: A+
IN: Josh Corbett (Gold Coast), Luke Jackson (Melbourne), Jaeger O’Meara (Hawthorn)
OUT: Blake Acres (Carlton), Rory Lobb (Western Bulldogs), Griffin Logue (North Melbourne), Lloyd Meek (Hawthorn), Darcy Tucker (North Melbourne)
2022 Draft Picks: 30, 44, 67, 76
It was pretty good going for the Dockers to rebound from the second-most lopsided trade of the entire period (and the most unnecessarily so) in week one to come out well and truly in the top four.
But that’s kind of what happens when you stick the landing on nabbing the generational homecoming talent that is Luke Jackson, in the process getting one up on a West Coast outfit who’d surely have backed themselves to out-lure a player of that calibre in virtually every other season of the western rivalry.
The Dockers were safely nestled in the 6-8 range in this list once Jackson donned the purple on Monday; but in the dying seconds of the trade period, they turned a handy haul into a masterpiece by bringing in Jaeger O’Meara for a relative song. Considering his talent, a double-backup ruckman in Lloyd Meek behind Sean Darcy and Jackson and a future second-rounder is a superb bit of bargaining to get done so late in the trade period for a contracted gun.
It was a little disappointing that the Dockers caved on Rory Lobb after driving a hard bargain for two months; bringing in pick 30 and a future second-rounder was about as much as they could have hoped for, but they talked a big game about wanting something a little higher and could always have held him to his contract.
More of a personal bugbear than anything, though; it’s still going to be an exciting summer to be a Freo supporter.
Grade: A+
IN: Josh Dunkley (Western Bulldogs), Jack Gunston (Hawthorn)
OUT: Tom Berry (Gold Coast), Daniel McStay (Brisbane)
2022 Draft Picks: 34, 35, 36, 38, 55, 56, 73
I’m more torn about how Brisbane’s trade period than about any other team.
On the one hand, they’re now the proud owners of a reigning best and fairest winner in Dunkley and a triple-premiership sharpshooter in Gunston, who should slot straight into Dan McStay’s vacant key forward spot for a season or two at least.
On the other, the Lions always had one eye on accruing as many draft points as they could in order to match bids on Will Ashcroft and Jaspa Fletcher – and with 2441 points available to them, the Lions can juuust scrape the points together to match a bid on Ashcroft at pick 1 (which will cost them 2400 points with the 20 per cent discount given to Academy and father-son players), but will surely not be able to pick both without going into deficit.
That shouldn’t present a problem for the Lions to secure them both unless the deficit situation is more complicated than I thought – Fremantle are the only side to have done it thus far – but with next year’s first-rounder gone and the Lions unlikely to have a pick inside the top 30 given their second-rounder is now tied to Geelong, this mightn’t be a situation they can rectify in a single year. I’ll always be surprised that they only had the briefest of glances at Jack Bowes and pick 7, which would surely have solved a fair few problems for them.
It’s not a major deal – they’ve got everyone they wanted to bring in and McStay has had one foot out the door since mid-year – but it’s enough to knock them to the edges of the top four. Just above…
Grade: A
(Photo by Chris Hyde/AFL Photos/via Getty Images )
IN: Brodie Grundy (Collingwood), Lachie Hunter (Western Bulldogs), Josh Schache (Western Bulldogs)
OUT: Toby Bedford (GWS), Jayden Hunt (West Coast), Luke Jackson (Fremantle), Sam Weideman (Essendon)
2022 Draft Picks: 13, 37
The Dees were dealt a rather rough hand to start proceedings, with Jackson announcing his intent to return home to Western Australia weeks ago. Considering that, I reckon they’ve absolutely banged it.
With two first- and second-rounders apiece next year courtesy of Fremantle, the Dees have built up a nice war chest for 2023. They can take it to the draft, or – and I suspect it’ll be this – they might already be eyeing a few players coming out of contract to try and lure across.
I couldn’t in good conscience have them in the top four given the loss of Jackson (as you can probably tell by where I’ve placed Freo in this ranking, I couldn’t rate him much higher), and I still have some lingering doubts about exactly how the Dees will use Brodie Grundy in ruck tandem with Max Gawn. Remember, they tried the same thing with Braydon Preuss years ago and it simply never worked.
Bringing in Lachie Hunter for a future third-rounder was a serious final-day bargain, and he should slot nicely into the best 22 on the opposite wing to Ed Langdon. Schache in and Weideman out, with a bit of a pick boost, is the definition of a zero sum, and the biggest losers of Hunt and Bedford’s departure are probably Casey.
Grade: A
IN: Jason Horne-Francis (North Melbourne), Junior Rioli (West Coast)
OUT: Karl Amon (Hawthorn)
2022 Draft Picks: 33, 60
I’ve seen a fair few people put the Power as one of the big winners of the trade period; and to be honest, I just can’t see it.
That’s not to say it wasn’t a successful 10 days – they secured a future star in Horne-Francis and a long-term trade target in Rioli without giving up anything more than draft picks – but they’re placing a lot of faith in their current list to get them back up the ladder, given the swathe of future picks now out the door. Port hold none of their orginal first-, second- or third-round picks, so another season outside the top eight could leave them looking back ruefully at their sacrifice.
Amon is also a heavy, if inevitable, loss to free agency, and replacing him on the wing looms as a challenge. I can’t help wondering if the Power might start Horne-Francis in that role, get him to build up his tank, and put the task in front of him to earn a centre bounce spot alongside Ollie Wines, Connor Rozee, Zak Butters and co.
Port got everything they wanted – but only time will tell whether the price they paid was worth it.
Grade: A
IN: Blake Acres (Fremantle)
OUT: Liam Jones (Western Bulldogs), Will Setterfield (Essendon)
2022 Draft Picks: 10, 29, 49, 66
Big players in the last three trade periods, the Blues were basically in and out by Day 2, when they secured Acres’ signature – nabbing him for a future third-rounder is still the best deal of the whole two weeks done against a competent club in my view – and swindled the AFL into getting compensation for the retired Liam Jones.
Good on them, I say – if you don’t ask you don’t get, and the league tends to usually give in those situations.
They slunk back in to offload Setterfield for chips, which only hurts their depth if that, and nothing eventuated for a Paddy Dow trade, otherwise they’d have probably done the same thing.
Acres alone is worth an A, though – it’s in his name, after all.
Grade: A
IN: Izak Rankine (Gold Coast)
OUT: Billy Frampton (Collingwood)
2022 Draft Picks: 23, 46
Rankine was always going to cost a pretty penny, and giving up pick 5 in exchange looms as the sort of trade people will come back to gleefully should he not become a serious player, and fast.
But I’ve still put the Crows as the best of a middle bunch of ‘not great, not terrible’ trade performers, simply because their best 22 remains largely the same. They weren’t satisfied with any deal for Matt Crouch (if indeed there were any takers), and weren’t desperate enough to offload him with a pick attached (hi, Suns) – a move I wholeheartedly support.
It would have been nice to see them at least have half a crack at Horne-Francis’ signature, but the Crows at that stage probably had less to offer in terms of picks than Port given the Rankine deal. Still, had they even asked the question, I might have bumped them up a spot or two.
Grade: B+
IN: Billy Frampton (Adelaide), Bobby Hill (GWS), Daniel McStay (Brisbane), Tom Mitchell (Hawthorn)
OUT: Brodie Grundy (Melbourne), Ollie Henry (Geelong)
2022 Draft Picks: 16, 25, 27, 51
No team has jump-roped up and down the rankings more than the Pies. Up the top early with McStay and Hill arriving; then plummeting down into the bottom six when Grundy was offloaded while still reportedly paying a big chunk of his salary; and finally nestling right in the middle when they made the very best of a bad situation by turning Ollie Henry into pick 25 and Tom Mitchell.
They’ve got three new best-22 players – four if Frampton becomes the backline saviour I’m sceptical he’ll become – but I just can’t stomach giving the Pies a top-eight spot in here given they’re paying a second star to play against them.
Grade: B+
IN: Griffin Logue (Fremantle), Darcy Tucker (Fremantle)
OUT: Jason Horne-Francis (Port Adelaide)
2022 Draft Picks: 2, 3, 40, 43, 59, 70
Call me crazy, but considering everything that went down in the last two weeks, I’d say North Melbourne came out of it in pretty good shape.
Well, maybe not pretty good shape… but decent enough, all things considering.
Losing Jason Horne-Francis was always going to be a grim scenario; and in another year, trading out pick 1 would be bananas. But given the nominal best player in the draft, Will Ashcroft, is tied to Brisbane, and it’s common knowledge GWS will now be taking Aaron Cadman with their newfound top pick, getting rid of a wantaway homesick teenager and a glorified pick 2 for two top-five picks amid a quite handy looming pool is a solid enough performance.
The Roos would have lobbed higher had they manage to swindle the Saints into giving up Hunter Clark, but I’m still impressed they held their ground and refused to give up pick 3 under any circumstances.
Grade: B+
Jason Horne-Francis poses for a photo with North Melbourne supporters. (Photo by Martin Keep/Getty Images)
IN: Aaron Francis (Essendon)
OUT: Nil
2022 Draft Picks: 14, 17, 42, 75
The Swans are no longer the master operators of trade period – satisfied with their list, they lay dormant for nine days before emerging from hibernation, yawning, and taking Aaron Francis off Essendon’s hands.
Clearly they didn’t get the memo this was supposed to be the biggest trade week ever, but with two first-round picks (I’d completely forgotten they have Melbourne’s first-rounder too) and a list good enough to get to a grand final if mysteriously disappear on the big day, little wonder list manager Kinnear Beatson napped through the two weeks.
Grade: B
IN: Jayden Hunt (Melbourne)
OUT: Junior Rioli (Port Adelaide)
2022 Draft Picks: 8, 12, 20, 26
I marked the Eagles down a bit for being so petulant about losing Junior Rioli – yes, I get you stuck by him during his two-year ban, but it would have been nice to see a bit more class and goodwill in their original press release.
The Eagles are down this far because they lost a quality footballer, gave up pick 2 and their sole inclusion of Jayden Hunt isn’t exactly going to turn this ship around. But they’re out of the bottom six because I quite like the tactics of getting themselves two picks in the top 15, presumably to land WA pair Jedd Busslinger and Elijah Hewett.
I reserve the right to shunt them down a few spots if another team gets in ahead of them and nabs one from under their nose.
Grade: C+
IN: Will Setterfield (Carlton), Sam Weideman (Melbourne)
OUT: Aaron Francis (Sydney)
2022 Draft Picks: 4, 22, 54, 62, 68, 72
Like the Swans… meh, just without the caveat of a grand final-calibre list.
On one hand, I do like the Bombers deciding to go to the draft this year, having spent so many seasons past luring in big-name targets without thinking about where they best fit; on the other, I can’t help wondering whether Adrian Dodoro misses being the centre of attention.
Tragically, Essendon’s streak of nine consecutive trade period premierships has reached its end. Vale.
Grade: C+
IN: Liam Jones (Carlton), Rory Lobb (Fremantle)
OUT: Zaine Cordy (St Kilda), Josh Dunkley (Brisbane), Lachie Hunter (Melbourne), Josh Schache (Melbourne)
2022 Draft Picks: 11, 21, 39, 69
I’ll be honest – I’ve had the Bulldogs in my bottom three for virtually the entirety of the trade period.
The impending exit of Dunkley saddened me, and it became comical when the Dogs were essentially forced to choose between losing him for nothing to spite Brisbane and let a premiership contender lowball them (I’ll debate this for as long as you want, pick 15 and a future first-rounder is barely acceptable on its own, let alone with two picks in the 30s flying back the other way).
They even dropped to 17th when Hunter was offloaded for a future third-rounder, one of three final-days trades alongside Brodie Grundy and Tom Mitchell that prove just because a player is contracted doesn’t mean their value automatically goes up. That trade with Melbourne was so bafflingly one-sided it’s pretty safe to assume Lachie joins Jake Stringer and Jordan Roughead in the ‘Bevo no like you no more so bye bye’ hall of premiership player rejects at the Whitten Oval.
Credit to Sam Power for getting some respectability back at the end, securing effectively a first-rounder and two second-rounders for Dunkley and giving Brisbane a draft deficit headache as well (yes I am very petty). The Lobb deal also wasn’t as panicked as I’d feared, and a pick in the 30s and one next year in the (presumably) mid-late 20s could have been a lot worse.
As a result, they jumped to 14th, and got themselves the barest of passing grades. Huzzah?
Grade: C-
IN: Zaine Cordy (Western Bulldogs)
OUT: Ben Long (Gold Coast)
2022 Draft Picks: 9, 28, 32, 47
I’m pretty disappointed in the Saints. They avoided a fail grade by not sending Hunter Clark out the door – the fact they were even considering that mid-period, and for something as reportedly low as a pick in the early 20s, had me as baffled as any other rumour for the past fortnight.
Overall, it’s like Essendon and Sydney: bland and meh. They still have a reasonable draft hand, but they strike me as a team spooked out of making any major plays for quality players, given their big push at the end of 2019 has had only partial success.
It wasn’t like they were too caught up in other deals to, say, have a crack at a Jaeger O’Meara, or a Griffin Logue, or heck, even try and get Blake Acres back home. Instead, they had a big push at Jordan De Goey, failed weeks ago, and finish the trade period with Zaine Cordy to show for it.
It’s far from a fail, but more than either the Bombers or the Swans, the Saints’ quiet trade period has me really concerned about where they’re headed.
Grade: C-
IN: Toby Bedford (Melbourne)
OUT: Tanner Bruhn (Collingwood), Bobby Hill (Collingwood), Jacob Hopper (Richmond), Tim Taranto (Richmond)
2022 Draft Picks: 1, 15, 18, 19, 31, 57, 61
The Giants’ salary cap situation was known to be dire weeks ago, so on one hand, they probably did well to at least get some good draft picks out of a bad situation.
Pick 1 is a boon, and guarantees them their choice (presumably Aaron Cadman) of young guns not named Will Ashcroft, though if the rumours are true that the only reason they wanted him was because he’s less of a flight risk than the others, that’s a serious problem with the equality of the draft that warrants a look by the AFL.
In any case, they’ll have four picks inside the top 25 once bids come in – a decent enough hand for them to have another crack at retaining a crop of youngsters. We’ve been down this road before with them, though.
Grade: D
IN: Karl Amon (Port Adelaide), Lloyd Meek (Fremantle), Cooper Stephens (Geelong)
OUT: Jack Gunston (Brisbane), Tom Mitchell (Collingwood), Jaeger O’Meara (Fremantle)
2022 Draft Picks: 6, 24, 41, 48, 50, 52, 65
At least GWS got some decent picks when they ripped their midfield apart.
I’ll be honest – I was extremely close to putting Hawthorn dead last for their trade period, and in particular their final day.
The only reasons I didn’t are that a) I really like what Karl Amon brings on a wing, and b) unlike Gold Coast, the Hawks’ moves seem at least willingly made rather than forced through list management incompetence.
Trading one of Mitchell and O’Meara would have been one thing, but letting go of both, and receiving one half-decent pick for them combined and a relatively unknown quantity in Stephens is a firesale in all but name. I simply don’t get what Sam Mitchell is trying to acheive in slowly but surely rooting out every last bit of experience he can.
The Hawks are starting from ground zero, which is fine: but I hope Sam knows how many teams explode like the Challenger space shuttle when they try to take off.
Grade: F
IN: Tom Berry (Brisbane), Ben Long (St Kilda)
OUT: Jack Bowes (Geelong), Josh Corbett (Fremantle), Izak Rankine (Adelaide)
2022 Draft Picks: 5, 45, 71, 74
Yikes.
It takes some doing to out-awful a team that just shipped its two most experienced midfielders to a farm where they’ll have lots of room to run around, but if anyone was going to do it, it’d be the Suns.
Let’s address the elephant in the room in a sec: for starters, neither Tom Berry nor Ben Long move the needle at all for a team that should be trying to add the missing piece to the puzzle from elsewhere to push them into the eight, a la Brisbane with Lachie Neale four years ago.
Throw in losing Rankine, though they did at least get that pick 5 back in return, and the Suns will go into 2023 weaker than they ended 2022 (albeit the return of Ben King will be a boon).
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But so much of their trade of Jack Bowes AND pick 7 to Geelong made no sense. For starters, it’s rubbish player management to let your salary cap get that far out of whack that you practically can’t afford to pay a top-10 pick who’s agreed to help you out by deferring his salary.
For another thing, why on earth would you announce from the outset that pick 7 is up for grabs? Surely given the Cats just ended up spreading Bowes’ salary anyway, they could have at least put him up for auction first. Hey, they might have been able to get a second-rounder for him if they’d had a crack!
There just had to be a better solution than coughing up pick 7, which even if they have more picks than they know what to do with, just makes them look like bumbling idiots continually feeding the top clubs.
At no point in their rambling, incoherent trade period were they even close to anything that could be considered a rational move. Everyone in the AFL is now dumber for having witnessed it. I award them no points, and may Gill have mercy on their souls.
Grade: F
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