List Mgmt. AFLW List Management, Trades, Draft, Expansion Thread

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There is finally an article explaining something about how expansion signings will work, but in that classic AFL fashion it raises many more questions than it actually answers.

How many players can each club lose? Expansion rules explained

The only real concrete thing from this is that, as expected, the Crows can lose up to eight players as expansion signings. There are various categories based on where you finished on the ladder and what state you're from, as far as I can tell we're the only club that can lose up to eight players. Probably fair enough I guess.

The bigger story here though is that the AFL will take away each club's first round draft pick unless they lose "enough" players as expansion signings. But, in typical AFL fashion, they have given no real information as to what "enough" means. Apparently each player lost will be worth a certain number of points based on age, payment tier, games played, and awards won (not clear if premierships count as awards, but I'm guessing not). Then, if a club doesn't lose 28 points worth of players as expansion signings, their first round pick is taken away.

The problem is, there is no indication as to how many points a player would be worth. Is an average player worth 4 points? 6 points? 8 points? There's no real indication given. The only slight indication is a throwaway line that says "a club can reach that 28-point threshold by only losing a couple of highly rated players". So presumably the best players would be worth at least 14 points.

Would Phillips be worth 14 points? She's obviously as highly rated as they come, and has won more awards than anybody, but she's also 37 years old. What about Angela Foley? She's won several awards and played a bunch of games, where does that wash out? Are they going to use the tier the player was on at their old club, or the tier they are signed to for the expansion club? It's all as clear as mud. What about Mules - she's played 49 games (only 4 games behind Marinoff who is equal first in the league for games played) and is still only 27 years old, but doesn't have any individual awards and was likely in the bottom tier. What is that worth?

I'm going to guess that Phillips, Foley and Mules gets us close to 28 points but perhaps not quite there. That would give us an incentive to have another player or two leave.


The system also seems to be quite unfair towards the bottom teams. They also have to lose 28 points to keep their first round pick, but they are permitted to lose fewer players, and their players are likely to be worth less points than players in the top sides anyway. And their first round pick is more valuable (because it comes earlier) than that of a higher ranked team. Is there going to be some multiplier for the bottom sides, or will they suddenly be exempt? The whole thing is a bit of a dog's breakfast.
A very intentional dogs breakfast.

Melbourne would lose their pick if they are serious about such a stupid rule.
 
Apr 29, 2008
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Speaking of Melbourne, there is another inequity there in terms of losing your first round pick.

Suppose that Brisbane loses their first round pick. In real terms, it only costs them one player. They are only competing with Gold Coast for QLD-based players, so Gold Coast get one more selection before their second-round pick.

Whereas if Melbourne loses their first round pick, it could cost them nine players. There are nine other clubs who could have picks between Melbourne's first and second round picks.

Obviously the size of the eligible draft pool is vastly bigger in Victoria than Queensland, but nonetheless, it's a very blunt instrument to employ. Likewise, a first round pick for the lowest-ranked Victorian side is worth a lot more than Melbourne's first round pick. It seems like the lowest-ranked Victorian sides have the most to lose here, and the least flexibility to avoid losing it. I can't imagine things will actually play out that way, but if we take it as written...
 

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Apr 29, 2008
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Also apparently the expansion signing period is now closing on Monday next week, as opposed to Friday this week as was originally claimed. At least, that's going by an article on womens.afl. Honestly, would it really hurt the AFL to put out a statement themselves clarifying all this s**t?

Monday is also when we will find out which clubs have lost first round picks, in advance of the trade period starting the following day.
 

AFC3000

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Also apparently the expansion signing period is now closing on Monday next week, as opposed to Friday this week as was originally claimed. At least, that's going by an article on womens.afl. Honestly, would it really hurt the AFL to put out a statement themselves clarifying all this s**t?

Monday is also when we will find out which clubs have lost first round picks, in advance of the trade period starting the following day.

Agree with the way they are releasing information.

I was reading an article today and it says

"Based on cumulative ladder position across seasons five and six womens.afl understands the top seven teams to be Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Fremantle, Collingwood, North Melbourne and Western Bulldogs, and the bottom seven teams to be Carlton, GWS, Richmond, St Kilda, Gold Coast, Geelong and West Coast."

Surely they can clarify that and give us the actual facts or release the statement from the AFL as well as the article.
 
Oct 21, 2012
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It seems like the lowest-ranked Victorian sides have the most to lose here, and the least flexibility to avoid losing it. I can't imagine things will actually play out that way, but if we take it as written...

Bottom ranked clubs would seem to be in a lose/lose situation - either give up players of value, or be stripped of a first round pick.

The rules designed to protect bottom ranked clubs by limiting the number of players that can be lost to expansion sides also reinforces this as they're less likely to reach the 28 point mark to keep a first rounder.
 
Apr 29, 2008
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Nicole Livingstone (the head of AFLW) had an appearance on Sarah Black's podcast today. She talked for around 18 minutes but didn't say much. A few takeaways:

No conferences this year, they will just use the old model of dividing last season's ladder in half (somehow factoring in the new teams) and then everyone plays a certain number of matches against the top teams and a certain number against the bottom teams, with the remaining matches against similar ranked teams. Of course, they could have achieved the same thing with conferences with the added benefit of not making the middle parts of the ladder meaningless, but I guess the ghosts of the botched 2019 conferences live on.

She seems opposed to AFLW players going full time because it will "create lots of failures" and prevent the players from becoming "well rounded people" which, I mean, yikes. You could make the same argument about the men but apparently it's only a concern here.

They will officially adopt the term "season 7" to refer to this year's second comp and will retain it going forward. So next year will be season 8, and so on. Sounds awkward but I guess if it works for superbowls then it can work here.

The rationale for ten weeks this year was that teams have already played 10-12 weeks recently. Fair enough I guess but that argument will be gone next year, and I don't think they want it to grow much then either. She didn't seek to see the value in each team playing the other at least once and contrasted it to the men who also play teams an uneven number of times.

Full fixture should be out by the end of June, but some times will not be announced until later (to avoid clashes with the men's finals). They also want to set up some double headers if possible.
 
Apr 29, 2008
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Hannah Dunn (the Suns captain) is moving to Port. In a roundabout way, she is responsible for us having Najwa Allen, after she convinced Allen to relocate to Adelaide to play in the SANFLW in an attempt to get in another season of football prior to that year's draft.

It's also the third time Dunn will be an inaugural player at a new club after being on GWS's list in 2017.
 
Apr 29, 2008
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So the expansion signing period is now closed, as far as I understand it. 2PM on Monday is what was said, I assume that's EST but maybe each state has it's own closing time? Either way it's almost 2PM now.

We haven't heard yet if any expansion signings occurred today (other than one from Bulldogs to Essendon) but if none did, then it means that all the top side got through the process without losing much of note. We were probably hit the hardest with Phillips/Foley/Mules but even that is not exactly devastating.
 
So the expansion signing period is now closed, as far as I understand it. 2PM on Monday is what was said, I assume that's EST but maybe each state has it's own closing time? Either way it's almost 2PM now.

We haven't heard yet if any expansion signings occurred today (other than one from Bulldogs to Essendon) but if none did, then it means that all the top side got through the process without losing much of note. We were probably hit the hardest with Phillips/Foley/Mules but even that is not exactly devastating.
Looks like this was the final signing



So we lost only three players to expansion. Wow.
 
Apr 29, 2008
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Back to back is on.

It's certainly a chance. Phillips is obviously a loss, she was 4th in our B&F despite missing a match. Mules came good in the second half of the season when she was moved back in the midfield but isn't a massive loss. Gore will hurt a bit. Foley didn't play anyway.

I've recently been rewatching our season and I had forgotten just how close we were to losing to Freo and Collingwood near the end of the season. There was only a goal in it for most of the day against Fremantle, and Collingwood had multiple shots on goal in the dying minutes to take the lead. Melbourne also missed a set shot midway through the last that would have put them only 2 points behind. We were at the head of the pack, but there wasn't that much of a gap between us and them.

Our defence was immense this season, but we'll need to get more potent up forward if we want to go back to back.
 
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This is hilarious. Rooch trying to say that Port are better off coming in later to get access to the top level SA kids now rather than when the Crows came in when, you know, we won a heap of premierships instead.
 
Apr 29, 2008
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Ironically, for all the failings of the young women's footy scene in SA back in 2017, the 18 year olds were pretty damn good. Hard to imagine a better crop than Hatchard, Marinoff and Allan all in one draft as 18 year olds.

In any event, Port will get the plum picks but we will still get to take a bunch of the young talent as well.
 
Apr 22, 2007
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We didn't lose enough players so we've essentially lost our first round draft pick, Port will have 5 picks before our 1st one



Brisbane Melbourne and Us were the only clubs who didn't "lose enough players" I gather it wouldn't matter how many we lost they were always gonna take away ours and the other 2 clubs.
 
Nov 28, 2011
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*ing lol

-- # of Players lost to expansion sides --

Collingwood - 4 (lost 2nd Rnd pick)
North Melb - 4 (lost 3rd Rnd pick)

Adelaide - 3 (lost 1st Rnd pick)
GWS - 3 (lost 2nd Rnd pick)
West Bull - 3 (lost 2nd Rnd pick)
Fremantle - 3 (lost 3rd Rnd pick)
St Kilda - 3 (EXTRA 1st Rnd pick - lost 3rd Rnd pick)
Gold Coast - 3 (No Picks Lost)

Brisbane - 2 (lost 1st Rnd pick)
Carlton - 2 (No picks Lost)

Geelong - 1 (lost 2nd Rnd pick)
Richmond 1 (lost 2nd Rnd pick)
Melbourne 1 (lost 1st Rnd pick)
West Coast 1 (EXTRA 1st Rnd pick)



basically all over the shop - no real rhyme or reason besides, i guess, just what ''feels right'' - which in this case makes Carlton the huge outlier - no picks lost ?
 

jello_bello

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So with the loss of our 1st round pick, Port will get 5 picks of the best SA talent before we can make a selection?
Well played AFL, well played.
 

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