AFL List Turnover Issues

[tapebreak]

The issue I think needs addressing is the ability of a club to make giant steps forward with their playing rosters. I think the current system is not only detrimental to club memberships and crowd numbers but also to the game as a whole. To expand on my point, an AFL coach generally has 4-5 years at the most to make a club turn its fortunes around and under the current system you may end up with a handfull of young kids (who are all at risk of wanting to return home) and possibly a trade or two, in each trade/draft period. The minimal amount of list changes really makes it tough for a new coach in the AFL trying to make a name for himself with a club with many names that are part of the issue more than the solution. With the lack of turnover at a club, which has been struggling, you are going to be hard pressed to gain more members than the year before. The bad thing for the AFL is that you have teams dominating patches while other clubs slip into debt like my beloved Port Adelaide. You end up with years much like when we were at the top with Brisbane and Port dominating the early 2000’s and then Geelong and Stkilda domination the late 2008-2010, while clubs like Melbourne and Richmond languish on the bottom (both of which look to have broken the shackles late this season). Im not saying that changes will make the whole difference but I think a more pliable system would give the fans and clubs more optimism, which will get crowd numbers up at the start of the season.

The things I would like to see implemented are:
· Change the draft order: If a young kid wants to play in his home state give the clubs who have the pick the option of trading the pick to the club of the players choice for a good player before we get to the home sick stage.
· Lengthen the Trade Period: One week dosent give anyone enough time to make the deals and consider the ramifications, why cant we see the trade period start after the grand final, say a week later, then close the trade just before pre-season training.
· D-League: I think the NBA’s second league is a brilliant idea as it gives players a second chance to make a career in the AFL and as such gives clubs more of a chance at a quick fix.

 

[tapebreak]

Also i would like to add that the NBA has it right where once a club gets a player in the draft they can instantly trade him on draft day.

 

[Ants]

I think you're slightly exagerating the case, but I do see your point. To a degree, it is going to be a function of an equalisation policy. Simply put, if you have a draft it will limit the access of even poor teams to get the best talent. Of course the league tried to fix that with priority picks and everyone then complains.

Note that this is not a new phenomena. In the old days you had single clubs dominating access to the talent via reputation, zoning or financial strength making the issue even worse. At least the draft does give the worst clubs first shot.

It will be interesting to see if with more teams and the current priority pick rules, if teams will be slowed down even more.

On your suggestions, I've no idea of what a D-league is. With the home grown issue, well I think thats silly. If you want to minimise clubs' time at the bottom, you don't want to reduce the talent pool by giving interstate clubs access. And the go home factor is exaggerated - most players going home are doing it as much for opportunity as anything else. Over the last decade there has only been about 7 or 8 who have actually forced their club's hands, and most of those times the clubs were compensated via trades.

I agree the trade period could be extended, but I think the length you propose is silly.

The change I would make is remove list maximums. i.e. a club can have as many on its senior list as it wants, as long as it obeys the minimum wage, minimum terms and salary cap requirements. This would give crap teams with salary cap room better access at the end of the draft and prior to the rookie draft than other teams.

If you really want to speed things up, you could also strengthen the priority pick rules, but I'd probably be against that.

 

[chardonnay]

Trade week is shambolic because clubs & player managers all want to one up the rest.
Win/win deals are held up to try & get more, more, more.

 

[Slattery_20]

Trade week is shambolic because clubs & player managers all want to one up the rest.
Win/win deals are held up to try & get more, more, more.

Odd comment: trade week is being used more and more.

Record number of deals last year, was it a record the year before as well?
20 odd players moved.

 

[Vader]

Odd comment: trade week is being used more and more.

Record number of deals last year, was it a record the year before as well?
20 odd players moved.

21 by my count, but that severely bucked the previous trend. It was heavily influenced by a draft which was perceived to be very weak - several teams were willing to trade out of the first round, most notably with picks 10+.

In contrast, just 6 players found new homes during the 2008 trade week, 20 in 2007, 9 in 2006, 12 in 2005 and 17 in 2004. There has been a strong downward trend for about a decade, with a couple of spikes caused by abnormal drafts.

 

[Slattery_20]

I had 2007 & 08 confused then.

Keeping in mind the draft's only come to the huge prominence it has now since maybe around 2000, before that it was a lot more hit & miss and a lot of players were traded in.

The rule tweaks - tradeable rookies, not required to use all traded picks - have brought through a lot more trades, especially lesser lights.

Flipside of weaker drafts is that clubs may need to get replacements from GC poachings.

 

[tapebreak]

Im just throwing us some ideas because i think the reason clubs struggle financially is that fans lose hope so easily since most clubs hardly make a noise in the trade or draft periods, for example Adelaide may aswell have taking a longer end of season trip since they pretty much didnt participate in anything lol.

The D-League reference was pretty much saying a reserve league would make the league stronger and to go along with what you said ANTS, extending the lists would give the clubs the ability to have a seconds team. Again not sure that this idea would work but its an idea all the same.

On the topic of home grown players staying at home i was trying to make the point that on draft day, why not let clubs have the ability to get the young kids they want while also allowing the clubs they trade with to gain either the kid they were after or an already established player in return. For example say a player like Gibbs wants to play for the crows (as he did) then on draft day the crows could have traded a quality player to get him. Maybe throwing trade period in as the last player movement then you cover all the bases by allowing clubs to unload the players who they asses to be of risk and also they can trade their picks to clubs who want them for larger gain.

The length of trade period i wrote in my last post was merely stating that teams struggle to get their trades done in a week and the fact is the AFL has the ability to make the period last from post grand final to pre season training if they wanted to. Its just way too small currently. Im definatly not saying it has to be that long to work properly.

 

[tapebreak]

On the topic of priority pick i think the NBA's lottery idea is a good way to stop the tanking that goes on. (again just an idea).

"In the current rules, the 14 non-playoff teams participate in the Draft Lottery. The lottery is weighted so that the team with the worst record has the best chance to obtain a higher draft pick. The lottery process determines the first three picks of the draft. The rest of the first-round draft order is in reverse order of the teams' win-loss record. As of 2008, with 30 NBA teams, 16 qualify for the playoffs and the remaining 14 teams are entered in the draft lottery. These 14 teams are ranked in reverse order of their regular season record and are assigned the following number of chances"

1.250 combinations, 25.0% chance of receiving the #1 pick
2.199 combinations, 19.9% chance
3.156 combinations, 15.6% chance
4.119 combinations, 11.9% chance
5.88 combinations, 8.8% chance
6.63 combinations, 6.3% chance
7.43 combinations, 4.3% chance
8.28 combinations, 2.8% chance
9.17 combinations, 1.7% chance
10.11 combinations, 1.1% chance
11.8 combinations, 0.8% chance
12.7 combinations, 0.7% chance
13.6 combinations, 0.6% chance
14.5 combinations, 0.5% chance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery

 

[Ants]

Im just throwing us some ideas because i think the reason clubs struggle financially is that fans lose hope so easily since most clubs hardly make a noise in the trade or draft periods, for example Adelaide may aswell have taking a longer end of season trip since they pretty much didnt participate in anything lol.

Given how Brisbane's gone, I don't think there is any correlation between the number of trades and success!
I wouldn't get too stuck on the trade period, fans usually get far more excited about young draftees since they only need to show flashes to keep the fans hopes up.

On the topic of home grown players staying at home i was trying to make the point that on draft day, why not let clubs have the ability to get the young kids they want while also allowing the clubs they trade with to gain either the kid they were after or an already established player in return. For example say a player like Gibbs wants to play for the crows (as he did) then on draft day the crows could have traded a quality player to get him. Maybe throwing trade period in as the last player movement then you cover all the bases by allowing clubs to unload the players who they asses to be of risk and also they can trade their picks to clubs who want them for larger gain.

Adelaide could have got Gibbs. They could have traded to Carlton for pick #1. They didn't want him that much so they didn't.

Frankly given how little gets done in a 5 day trade period, I shudder to think what adding trading on draft day would do. And think of the poor players traded out!

 

[Ants]

On the topic of priority pick i think the NBA's lottery idea is a good way to stop the tanking that goes on. (again just an idea).

"In the current rules, the 14 non-playoff teams participate in the Draft Lottery. The lottery is weighted so that the team with the worst record has the best chance to obtain a higher draft pick. The lottery process determines the first three picks of the draft. The rest of the first-round draft order is in reverse order of the teams' win-loss record.

Just to clarify, is your concern tanking or reducing the time teams spend down the bottom? Because if you're concern is on the time spent down, as per your OP, then priority picks are the godsend. They speed up teams return by heaps, while simultaneously weakening the draft picks of teams who finished in the finals.

Think of how much hope players like Pendlebury, Franklin, Trengrove, Didak have been for their teams. Even Tambling gave so much hope for many years to Richmond fans. How much they sped up teams resurgence. And even when they don't come off, you often get a good pick - look at Melbourne with McLean and Bulldogs with Ray.

Of course it creates a few issues with tanking, but if your priority is to give fans hope and get teams off the bottom of the ladder, this is the way.

 

[Vessel]

I do not know how much you watch other sports because I cannot think of any other sport off the top of my head which allows every team in the competition a greater chance of winning the thing.

The biggest problem AFL has is the size of the competition vs the grassroots/supporters. There are simply not enough AFL quality players to go around and there are not enough supporters to go around.

This is only going to get worse with the introduction of GC and GWS. Two sides who are meant to be creating new supporters/grassroots but in reality are currently only stealing them from other teams.

Props to AFL though for going ahead with it anyway against what can only have been alot of opposition. Helps when you hold the purse strings I guess. At least they realise AFL needs to grow if it wants to survive.

As for Port Adelaide, I would think you should be laughing about how good the system is for you. You have won your premiership (cashed in as it were), you are now soaking up the good talent with having early draft picks. Gearing up for another tilt at a premiership down the track. All the while being supported financially by the AFL during your time down the bottom. No other sport would do this for you.

 

[Glitch]

On the topic of priority pick i think the NBA's lottery idea is a good way to stop the tanking that goes on. (again just an idea).

Tapebreak. A couple of points.

Firstly, we have a D-League, depending on your team, it's called the reserves, or affiliates etc....

Secondly with reference to the lottery idea to stop tanking, have you thought of the impact of this? It essentially means the team finishing last will not very often get the first pick; which goes against the point of the drafting system - to provide some equality or fairness to teams over time.

You cite basketball as your example for most things draft, fine, so I will use this too. San Antonio had one injury plagued year and just missed the playoffs. As a reward they won the lottery and the rights to the first pick. They won the Championship the next year as a result (Tim Duncan) and have been at the top for 10 years as a result. There were many other teams who had been a whole lot worse for a whole lot longer and still are because they are consistently missing the top picks due to the lottery. The Warriors, Clippers and many others for example. The lottery is in itself introduces just as much problems as it attempts to solve. Please find a better way!

So if the idea of the draft system was to even out the competition, surely a better way would be to have a draft system where the picks were determined not just on this year, but over a series of years.

 

[Glitch]

As for Port Adelaide, I would think you should be laughing about how good the system is for you. You have won your premiership (cashed in as it were), you are now soaking up the good talent with having early draft picks. Gearing up for another tilt at a premiership down the track. All the while being supported financially by the AFL during your time down the bottom. No other sport would do this for you.

Vessel, I can't stand Port, but I have to say the same would apply to your mob, should they fall down the ladder....

 

[Vessel]

Vessel, I can't stand Port, but I have to say the same would apply to your mob, should they fall down the ladder....

Of course it would. I was simply highlighting how much the AFL already disadvantages the successful clubs in the competition (at any given time) at the moment. Asking for even more seems a bit ludicrous.

 

[soreplums]

Tapebreak. A couple of points.

Firstly, we have a D-League, depending on your team, it's called the reserves, or affiliates etc....

Secondly with reference to the lottery idea to stop tanking, have you thought of the impact of this? It essentially means the team finishing last will not very often get the first pick; which goes against the point of the drafting system - to provide some equality or fairness to teams over time.

You cite basketball as your example for most things draft, fine, so I will use this too. San Antonio had one injury plagued year and just missed the playoffs. As a reward they won the lottery and the rights to the first pick. They won the Championship the next year as a result (Tim Duncan) and have been at the top for 10 years as a result. There were many other teams who had been a whole lot worse for a whole lot longer and still are because they are consistently missing the top picks due to the lottery. The Warriors, Clippers and many others for example. The lottery is in itself introduces just as much problems as it attempts to solve. Please find a better way!

So if the idea of the draft system was to even out the competition, surely a better way would be to have a draft system where the picks were determined not just on this year, but over a series of years.

Difference in Basketball though is that the roster is a lot smaller than that of an AFL club whereby one player can make more of a difference in a team in the NBA compared to one of 37 in the AFL.

I have always liked the idea of the lottery for the first three picks and then a priority pick to be used at the end of round one for those teams that finish last or accumulate less 40 points over two seasons. I also think that good prize money should be awarded to clubs depending on where they finish on the ladder at the end of round 22. More cash could mean that clubs could pay more of their salary cap, improve facilities, more coaches, better resources, spend more on footy department etc and may even deter tanking if one game or percentage could be the difference of $100-200k.