News AFL overhauls Academy and FS bid matching, discussing draft lockout

[Deadly Darcy]

As much as we could, that and. North thought Kelly would be an easy get. The culture at the club said otherwise.

And I’m totally fine with that if GWS had convinced him to stay.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Not going to go in to everything here, just the notion of fairness.

I believe you will find many not Victorian fans have a different idea of what fairness looks like.

For me personally, it would be the binning of 5 Victorian clubs, playing a true home and away schedule, and much tighter free agency rules, similar to those seen in the nba. And rotating where the AFL grand final is played each year. And the removal of all academies, and compensation picks.

Actually have a read of the AFL constitution and articles of association though. AFL exists to serve the interests of its previous member clubs, not just to run a competition for the code in an abstract sense.

Binning clubs is wholly unfair because the fact that they were there first explicitly is a reason for the AFL's being.

All of this is to anyway say that "binning" Melbourne clubs would be horrendous for the league and would lose far more fans for the sport than any perceived benefit for a better organised national league. By all accounts a third of Fitzroy fans left following AFL all together, that's not to say fans of other clubs won't also stop watching because of how those clubs were treated.

It was also entirely "fair" that the VFL won the battle of a nationalising league from the 70s to 00s and therefore can run in the interests of existing clubs that help build up the VFL to what it became in the AFL.

No club was under duress by the VFL/AFL when they wanted to enter into the league that there were already a lot of Melbourne clubs in.

 

[briztoon]

Actually have a read of the AFL constitution and articles of association though. AFL exists to serve the interests of its previous member clubs, not just to run a competition for the code in an abstract sense.

Binning clubs is wholly unfair because the fact that they were there first explicitly is a reason for the AFL's being.

All of this is to anyway say that "binning" Melbourne clubs would be horrendous for the league and would lose far more fans for the sport than any perceived benefit for a better organised national league. By all accounts a third of Fitzroy fans left following AFL all together, that's not to say fans of other clubs won't also stop watching because of how those clubs were treated.

It was also entirely "fair" that the VFL won the battle of a nationalising league from the 70s to 00s and therefore can run in the interests of existing clubs that help build up the VFL to what it became in the AFL.

No club was under duress by the VFL/AFL when they wanted to enter into the league that there were already a lot of Melbourne clubs in.

So you’re not really interested in fairness, just removing anything you don’t directly benefit from.

 

[Maybe Tomorrow]

It was also entirely "fair" that the VFL won the battle of a nationalising league from the 70s to 00s and therefore can run in the interests of existing clubs that help build up the VFL to what it became in the AFL.

This is amazing. Wild take tbh.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

This is amazing. Wild take tbh.

It's true though. Teams joined an existing league that clubs already existed in.

And to be fair I'm not claiming that there should be any benefit to the existing clubs other than to say "they have a right not to be kicked out of the league on the provision that they earn enough money" which all clubs currently do.

 

[Maybe Tomorrow]

It's true though. Teams joined an existing league that clubs already existed in.

And to be fair I'm not claiming that there should be any benefit to the existing clubs other than to say "they have a right not to be kicked out of the league on the provision that they earn enough money" which all clubs currently do.

You said the league should be run in the interest of the VFL clubs.........

It was also entirely "fair" that the VFL won the battle of a nationalising league from the 70s to 00s and therefore can run in the interests of existing clubs that help build up the VFL to what it became in the AFL.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

You said the league should be run in the interest of the VFL clubs.........

It's in the interest of existing VFL come AFL clubs to not be kicked out of the league, no? That's the point I'm trying to make here? And that's the argument made by many non-Victorians?

To be clear, when I say "in their interests", I don't mean that they should have any advantage or preference. Just that they have a right to refuse to be kicked out of the league.

 

[Colonial]

It's in the interest of existing VFL come AFL clubs to not be kicked out of the league, no? That's the point I'm trying to make here? And that's the argument made by many non-Victorians?

To be clear, when I say "in their interests", I don't mean that they should have any advantage or preference. Just that they have a right to refuse to be kicked out of the league.

Did Fitzroy know this or is it a late change?

 

[danster168]

I don’t disagree with this. If Darcy wemt open pool he would be coming back to the dogs this year or next (can’t remember). There is too much history with his dad and granddad for him not to come back. But, GWS would have got Max value for him on the trade and deservedly so as they finished lower and selected him. There is nothing to stop fathersons going home after 3 years - just a risk the clubs would knowingly take on when selecting them. Hate to think what it would have cost to drag him out!

Thats all a myth. This idea that players feel this loyalty to their dads club is one of the biggest myths in footy. You dont think Joe Danihers links to Essendon were strong when he chose to leave and go to Brisbane, or jack silvagni wanting to go to stkilda. Theres a truckload of father/sons who have just as strong a link and no-one (including the player) cares.

Darcy most likely wouldve stayed at his drafted club but you can live in fairly land of this made up father/son romance if you like

 

[Miller1971]

Could be a sign of things to come, but I became aware today that the AFL employed QLD Talent Manager of 30+ years was recently made redundant with the role to now be covered from Victoria. Perhaps they feel the job is done in QLD and will be scaling back pathways up here?

Or they just wanted to get rid of a bloke who is 100 years old

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Did Fitzroy know this or is it a late change?

Fitzroy went broke. They were treated awfully but technically legally speaking they were allowed to be kicked out because they were in administration.

 

[AstonSouffle]

Could be a sign of things to come, but I became aware today that the AFL employed QLD Talent Manager of 30+ years was recently made redundant with the role to now be covered from Victoria. Perhaps they feel the job is done in QLD and will be scaling back pathways up here?

Or they just wanted to get rid of a bloke who is 100 years old

As with everything AFL, if volunteers exist - squeeze them for everything so that their administration can be filled with inefficient paid excel cell entering plodders.

 

[Colonial]

Could be a sign of things to come, but I became aware today that the AFL employed QLD Talent Manager of 30+ years was recently made redundant with the role to now be covered from Victoria. Perhaps they feel the job is done in QLD and will be scaling back pathways up here?

Or they just wanted to get rid of a bloke who is 100 years old

Ahh yes because Victorians know all about how to grow and nurture the game in other states.
NSW has the same issue.

 

[Colonial]

Fitzroy went broke. They were treated awfully but technically legally speaking they were allowed to be kicked out because they were in administration.

Did they though?
Or were the pushed?
There’s a couple of Victorian clubs over 100 years old who seem to get almost expansion level funding.

 

[Miller1971]

Ahh yes because Victorians know all about how to grow and nurture the game in other states.
NSW has the same issue.

yes, I've heard the equivalent role in NSW also has been retrenched.

QLD 'might'be ready for that, but NSW definitely isn't

Very short sighted

 

[Deadly Darcy]

Thats all a myth. This idea that players feel this loyalty to their dads club is one of the biggest myths in footy. You dont think Joe Danihers links to Essendon were strong when he chose to leave and go to Brisbane, or jack silvagni wanting to go to stkilda. Theres a truckload of father/sons who have just as strong a link and no-one (including the player) cares.

Darcy most likely wouldve stayed at his drafted club but you can live in fairly land of this made up father/son romance if you like

In most cases I would agree. Certain characters however, like Bontempelli, Libba and Darcy, are either super loyal (in the case of the former who we were fortunate enough to draft) or have such family ties that it genuinely overrides other factors. Many father-sons would end up at other clubs and staying fat with them. I’m sure both Darcy and Libba would have found their way back to the kennel.

 

[danster168]

In most cases I would agree. Certain characters however, like Bontempelli, Libba and Darcy, are either super loyal (in the case of the former who we were fortunate enough to draft) or have such family ties that it genuinely overrides other factors. Many father-sons would end up at other clubs and staying fat with them. I’m sure both Darcy and Libba would have found their way back to the kennel.

you're just living in your own bubble and it's a very naive point of view. To suggest that their loyalty is stronger over all of the other father-sons that have left is just a true example of being blinded by your own club. Every player is loyal, until they're not.

Hell Gary Ablett left to go the Suns and his ties to Geelong were stronger than any of the names you listed.

You mention Libba, even though he literally was trying to get out of there during the middle of his career.

 

[Colonial]

I’m sure both Darcy and Libba would have found their way back to the kennel.

You sound like North fans with Kelly,
Richmond fans with Green are getting there though.

 

[Choogler]

Actually have a read of the AFL constitution and articles of association though. AFL exists to serve the interests of its previous member clubs, not just to run a competition for the code in an abstract sense.

Binning clubs is wholly unfair because the fact that they were there first explicitly is a reason for the AFL's being.

Lovely sentiment, how did it serve Fitzroy? If they can sacrifice Fitzroy, what makes the other clubs so sacrosanct?

The explicit reason for the AFL existing as it does, is due to the injection of funds via Licence fees from WCE and Brisbane Bears. Without that the competition wouldn't look like it does today. Personally I wish WCE and BB had waited another 12 months and let the Vic Commissioner of Corporate Affairs completely shut down the VFL which, even if it (the VFL) had survived, it would have forced mergers or some clubs to fold and resulted in a much more even and different looking competition.

Saving football: New documents reveal how close the VFL came to shutting down

In 1986, the Victorian Football League came perilously close to being shut down. Thirty years on, never before seen documents reveal how close the end nearly came.

www.theage.com.au

All of this is to anyway say that "binning" Melbourne clubs would be horrendous for the league and would lose far more fans for the sport than any perceived benefit for a better organised national league. By all accounts a third of Fitzroy fans left following AFL all together, that's not to say fans of other clubs won't also stop watching because of how those clubs were treated.

It was also entirely "fair" that the VFL won the battle of a nationalising league from the 70s to 00s and therefore can run in the interests of existing clubs that help build up the VFL to what it became in the AFL.

No club was under duress by the VFL/AFL when they wanted to enter into the league that there were already a lot of Melbourne clubs in.

But WCE & Brisbane both entered what then became a 14 team competition that (in a 22 round season) demanded at least 9 Vic clubs travel to Perth & Brisbane each season. That has changed significantly and the entry of every new interstate club has made it less fair for existing interstate clubs.
Fact is, the non-viable Melbourne based clubs should have been told 20 years ago that they become self-supporting. If they were unable to, then they would have to merge to stay in Melbourne or relocate. It should have happened before expanding and creating new clubs in GC and GWS.

Your club WB is a financial liability that survives only because of AFL gifted prop-up funding, so its little wonder you have such a pro-Vic bias in your comments

 

[Choogler]

There's no way Port will let Pilot take off to another sport/club. An Indigenous key forward / midfielder that's 194cm and growing with speed + vertical leap that matches up against the best. He regularly kicks bags as well. This kid may well be the second coming of Buddy Franklin! There's absolutely no chance he ends up anywhere but Port Adelaide. He already looks like an AFL player and so far ahead of others his age (see below). Port are going to have some ridiculously talented Indigenous players in the near future with the likes of Horne-Francis, Cochrane and Pilot all being top 2 picks! The Port Academy is doing its job of delivering high quality Indigenous players into the league. Reap the rewards if you put the effort in.

It's not so much putting in the work as the luck of the draw with the talent that comes through. Like father son, work as hard as you like but if it ain't in the genes, it just ain't in the genes.

 

[Choogler]

That’s easily fixed.

1. AFL fully fund the academies
2. All the kids that come through them go into the open pool to be drafted
3. No Patterson gets left behind to the mercies of cricket or rugby.

Who staffs them?

 

[Viceregal]

That’s easily fixed.

1. AFL fully fund the academies
2. All the kids that come through them go into the open pool to be drafted
3. No Patterson gets left behind to the mercies of cricket or rugby.

Patterson in that scenario totally gets left behind to the mercies or cricket or rugby ... offered a guaranteed paypacket, training and club (three separate offers in his case) vs training to play with and for iirc Port and he picked AFL to join the Power and Port have pretty much committed to picking him in his draft year (not picking is an option but bad faith in that arena would come back to bite you after) ... given that same choice but with you get generic AFL training and will most likely get picked but the worst performing, worst staffed club with most likely a history of failing to develop elite talent and surrounded by players with a loser mentality ... he ain't coming our way...

 

[Choogler]

Why are the "experts" saying this? Maybe they have an interest in more money being spent on the code?
If the draftable talent pool is 10% smaller or whatever it doesn't make a different. If Dylan Patterson never played AFL it doesn't make a difference to the fairness of running a competition.


Clubs had an interest in removing something so they would be themselves more likely to win? Colour me shocked.

It's the AFL's job to step in and allow the competition to be run fairly. That may mean not bending to the whines of the clubs who want to remove COLA for their benefit. But it also means not allowing teams to recruit top players at a massive discount that smashes through the equalisation principles of the draft, to make them meaningless.
Firstly, never said that we didn't benefit - why do you keep bringing this up secondly as a gotcha. Of course the Dogs benefited (in theory) by Jamarra, doesn't mean I'm claiming it as fair. It was an unfair benefit the Dogs got.

Secondly, F/S is a different matter because it is in theory equally balanced over all 18 clubs over the long term and whatever club benefits is just luck. Clubs don't also get to run academies for their F/S players in the same way for Northern Academies - as I've posted in this thread earlier, Annable has run around wearing a Brisbane jumper for numerous games this year. Darcy never did, we didn't have any influence over his pre-draft development.

On the other hand, there's a structural element to the Northern NGA's in that those clubs can expect to get more and more talent at a discount over the long run in a manner that the souther clubs don't. F/S evens out among all clubs in the end. But NGA wil consistently produce more than 1/18th of the best talent per academy on a year by year basis, you re giving an in built structural draft advantage to these clubs to the disadvantage of the fairness of the draft competition.


Neither are likely to be drafted, shows how much you actually know.
What do you expect me to do? Resign my membership in protest? I'm entirely fine with saying how the Dogs befitted from Jamarra as an unfair process. The AFL should have never let us get him at that much of a discount, obviously.

I think the thing that gets overlooked in the whole debate about attracting players from other sports is this.

The AFL's primary focus is not a fair and balanced competition, never has been and never will be. Its focus is money and to make MORE money you have to attract MORE people to the sport.

So, GC drafted 4 academy kids this draft that, but for the academy, may have been playing other sports.

What is the overall result of now having those kids in the AFL?

Each of those players have parents, siblings, other relatives, sporting and school friends. So the cumulative effect could be 100s of people per player that will now follow AFL with interest because of just that one player. It leads to increased viewership, attendances and memberships generating $$$ not just for the AFL but also for the GC club.

As long as the AFL makes money and increases market share, the academies are going nowhere... the only thing that might change are the rules.

Just a thought!!

 

[Deadly Darcy]

Who staffs them?

The current staff can continue to staff them paid by the AFL (not by the club and outside the club caps). Everything stays as is as it is working well except the pay check comes from a different office and the players go into the open draft pool. It would make zero ****s to anything except to even out the fairness to the clubs bottoming out and the players have to accept going interstate for 3 years (as Harley Reid and many others have sucked up). If they really hate going interstate they play their Bailey Smith bonus card and say they can’t go intestate for some b/S health reason……..

 

[Deadly Darcy]

Patterson in that scenario totally gets left behind to the mercies or cricket or rugby ... offered a guaranteed paypacket, training and club (three separate offers in his case) vs training to play with and for iirc Port and he picked AFL to join the Power and Port have pretty much committed to picking him in his draft year (not picking is an option but bad faith in that arena would come back to bite you after) ... given that same choice but with you get generic AFL training and will most likely get picked but the worst performing, worst staffed club with most likely a history of failing to develop elite talent and surrounded by players with a loser mentality ... he ain't coming our way...

Ironically grew up supporting the Brions