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Opinion
The AFL is not a meritocratic competition. A competition that is not fair damages the integrity of premierships, disillusions fans in expansion markets and ultimately prevents Aussie rules from becoming Australia’s national game.
There is a trade-off between celebrating the traditions of the game and awarding it the dynamism to become truly fair and modern. The AFL is not getting this balance right, enabling this issue to become more damaging with the potential introduction of a 19th and possibly 20th team in small markets.
It’s time to reform the AFL’s outdated trade period rules. The current rules force some to ask why the AFL is not years but decades behind foreign sporting code innovations and talent equalisation efforts.
The answer is simple. This is an issue of vision, complacency and an over-romanticisation of traditions, not one of collective bargaining agreements or financial resources.
The point of these ideas is not to have a competition where every club wins the premiership an equal number of times. It is also not to have every team be perfectly balanced in its roster talent. Rather, it is to establish an environment where club success is based on player development, skilful roster management, board stability and good coaching rather than systemic inadequacies in the AFL’s off-season structures.
This article presents ideas embedded within foreign sporting codes to modernise the game’s off-season rules, providing clubs, new and old, with an equal playing field to compete in talent acquisition and roster building.
A compromised national draft
A national draft is supposed to allow the worst teams unfettered access to the best young talent entering a sporting code. The AFL has comprehensively failed in this regard, with huge chunks of the best young talent already committed to clubs further down the draft board. Other leagues, like the NBA and NFL, succeed in what should be the relatively straightforward task of holding an uncompromised national draft. So how does the AFL get it so wrong?
Father-son rules
There is an undeniable romanticism in watching another generation of iconic names compete in their family’s club colours. But as the rules currently stand, historic clubs get unfair access to sometimes generationally talented players.
If father-son rules are to survive in a fair offseason system, historic AFL clubs with access to highly converted talent need to be paying much more than they currently do. Players like Garry Ablett Jr, Nick Daicos and Will Ashcroft should cost historic teams at least two first-round picks rather than an assortment of mid to late-round ‘junk’ capital.
Expansion clubs are also at a severe disadvantage when generating father-son prospects. How long do you think it will be before the Suns or Giants get a father-son player? 2040? 2050? Longer?
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
The academies and zoning rights
By expanding the game into new areas at a grassroots level, AFL academies provide an undeniable good to the game. They introduce young talent into the AFL system that would have otherwise committed to other sporting codes. Isaac Heeney, an uber-talented footballer from NRL’s heartland, exemplifies this.
It should be the AFL, not clubs, footing the bills and driving the expansion of these grassroot academies. Talent drawn from academies should be put in the national draft and left unprotected.
Clubs will argue that academy players will not fully participate in the AFL system if they do not get to dictate, for the entirety of their career, where they get to live. Players who are unwilling to commit long term to an interstate or struggling team fall into a similar ‘homesick’ bucket.
This is the fundamental issue with the AFL today. Playing in an elite, high-paying national competition is a privilege and not an ordinary job. No one player or club is bigger than the code or the meritocratic integrity of the competition. If you don’t want to participate in a system that fairly equalises talent, then the game will survive without you.
This is rarely an issue in the NFL or the NBA because those competitions understand this principle and ruthlessly implement it for the better of the league. The rare exceptions to this rule are players who are extremely valuable to the league’s brand, like John Elway. However, these controversies are usually accompanied by severe fan and owner outrage.
Free agency failures
Draft capital
Allow clubs unfettered access to their future draft capital. This provides front offices with the flexibility required to undertake bolder list management decisions.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/AFL Photos/Getty Images)
The preseason draft
Just stop this. No other sport has such a ridiculous mechanism. Clubs routinely game the system – see Josh Dunkley trade talks – by threatening to let players walk to the preseason draft.
It boggles the mind that uncontracted players need to be traded in the first place rather than having the freedom to move clubs if they choose. Hard salary caps are a good enough mechanism in other sports to prevent teams from stockpiling prime-age talent acquired via free agency.
Rookie contracts
First and second-round AFL players drafted should receive five-year base contracts. Other draft picks should receive three-year deals. Teams should then have the ability to match the next contract offered to that player for up to two years. Under this model, the first time a first or second-round AFL player taken in the national draft can hit the unfettered open market is after they turn 25.
A midseason trade deadline
Don’t close the trade window until the middle of the AFL regular season. Give teams the mobility to move contracted players during the season and address their list flaws as they are identified.
Year-round list mobility
Allow teams to delist and sign uncontracted players from the state leagues as the season occurs.
Super max contracts and a soft cap
This is an idea from the NBA to assist small market teams from losing their superstars. Essentially it awards loyal players with a much larger payday than players who choose to switch teams.
This mechanism is not directly applicable to the AFL, as the AFL does not have ceilings on player earnings. However, the ability to exceed a hard salary cap (a soft cap) could be awarded to star interstate players who choose to stay. This mechanism should only ever be a temporary equalisation instrument, as its real-world implementation results have had mixed success.
A ‘franchise’ tag
In the NFL a franchise has the right to tag a player who has just concluded the final year of their contract. This tag lets a franchise automatically hold onto a player, awarding them a lucrative one-year deal – the contract is calculated by averaging the five highest earners at that position.
This mechanism was designed to prevent teams from losing a highly coveted player and gives the club more time to negotiate a long-term deal. Franchise tags are a mechanism that has been gamed in the past – see Josh Norman in the NFL – and as such are not a comprehensive solution to the issues the AFL faces.
Player loans
Interclub player loans are a staple of soccer. Damien Hardwick has personally advocated for their introduction into the AFL system. Loans in sport are when one team borrows a contracted player from another team for a set period of time. In exchange, the team that has a player loaned to them pays a portion or the full amount of that player’s salary.
The team that loans out a player gives that individual the opportunity of getting valuable playing experience that otherwise would have been hard to facilitate. Player loans could be part of the puzzle, but ultimately they are not assets a struggling team can invest in long term.
The AFL’s sluggish offseason rules need a shake-up, that much is clear. Of these options that have been tried and tested in foreign sports, which do you believe would make the biggest impact on equalising the competition?
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