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

[Caligo]

It’s been take away.

Take away?

 

[Maybe Tomorrow]

As I said, lots of thirds and fourths, often over many trades to maximise the flaws in the points table that we all agree is bullshit.

But it isn't like GC is the first to do it

I think the point is the Suns have not drafted many over the past few seasons to build draft capital for the academy kids. There has been a cost involved.

It's not like they just turned pick 4 into 4 academy players, despite what some seem to think.

 

[Caligo]

I think the point is the Suns have not drafted many over the past few seasons to build draft capital for the academy kids. There has been a cost involved.

It's not they just turned pick 4 into 4 academy players, despite what some seem to think.

Yep. It definitely wasn't just pick 4. It was also a bunch of your later picks over a two years, and even a few surplus players.

Anyone who says it was just 4 is misrepresenting reality.

 

[GC2015]

Even worse than that as from memory I think it is 15 of the last 17 premierships have been Victorian teams.

It's a statistical abnormality. 8/18 (44.4%) teams are not based in Victoria, yet just 2/17 (11.7%) have captured a premiership over the period you mentioned. Any statistician would tell you that discrepancy is far too large for it to be coincidental.

Conveniently ignoring the massive gift the VFL gave North. No Vic uproar about that. Now imagine it was the Swans who were basically gifted a top 5 pick. At least the GC thing was not at all dodgy

What's really crazy is Ben McKay is now one of the highest paid players in the AFL just purely to guarantee a first round compensation pick for North. In American sports this would be considered tampering and teams are fined a lot of money/draft picks if they are found guilty. No such issue in the AFL.

As I said, lots of thirds and fourths, often over many trades to maximise the flaws in the points table that we all agree is bullshit.

But it isn't like GC is the first to do it

That's selective outrage. Collingwood matched a pick 4 bid for Nick Daicos with picks 38, 40, 42 & 44 and no one batted an eye. You can't just be ok with Collingwood using 4 third rounders to secure a generational talent in Daicos and then have a massive issue with Gold Coast using 3 second rounders to secure a player like Jed Walter. You've got to either be ok with everyone doing it or against it entirely. Can't have it both ways if you're going to criticise.

 

[Caligo]

It's a statistical abnormality. 8/18 (44.4%) teams are not based in Victoria, yet just 2/17 (11.7%) have captured a premiership over the period you mentioned. Any statistician would tell you that discrepancy is far too large for it to be coincidental.


What's really crazy is Ben McKay is now one of the highest paid players in the AFL just purely to guarantee a first round compensation pick for North. In American sports this would be considered tampering and teams are fined a lot of money/draft picks if they are found guilty. No such issue in the AFL.


That's selective outrage. Collingwood matched a pick 4 bid for Nick Daicos with picks 38, 40, 42 & 44 and no one batted an eye. You can't just be ok with Collingwood using 4 third rounders to secure a generational talent in Daicos and then have a massive issue with Gold Coast using 3 second rounders to secure a player like Jed Walter. You've got to either be ok with everyone doing it or against it entirely. Can't have it both ways if you're going to criticise.

"Nobody batted an eye"? what???

People lost it so hard at daicos and juh before him. The juh drama was so high it caused a massive rule change.

It isn’t the same though. GC is an expansion club we are trying to build to expand the game as a whole. Collingwood and WB aren't.

I don't have a major problem with it.

The McKay corruption? That was dodgy as heck. It is 100x more serious and important for the afl to deal with than gc getting a bit of help to make them more resilient against southern raiding.

 

[FB19]

The academy system clearly works as a development pathway. Anyone calling for it to be scrapped is confusing that with how players become eligible to select and paying fair value. the thread was setup to discuss that.
So what are the fundamental problems to solve? If all players were available to all clubs equally depending on initially ladder position and then final draft order, why doesn’t that work? What are the reasons that players leave clubs? Surely identifying and solving for those problems is the way forward. I ignore things like development and success as these are somewhat controllable items. So what are the disadvantages that are embedded and are they permanent or timebound? Really interested to hear people’s views on those items.
On fair value I think that’s much simpler.
1. Revisit the points allocation with updated data for more recent drafts. Also remove points value post round 3.
2. Bid matches - no discount priority access is enough advantage
3. Bid matches - no more than 2 picks to match. Means especially early picks can’t be matched with junk
There are obviously other things that could be added or improvements to my suggestions but i think those are easy and quick wins for 2025

 

[Pommie Docker]

The reality is that your introduction into the comp was a complete balls up that left you crap for the first 15 years. Now that's passed, you're a team that will have good periods, s**t periods and periods where you're middling. At the moment you're middling on field. Some fans however are excelling at whinging.

"You got screwed when you entered the comp and now that's passed, you shouldn't complain as you get screwed by handouts to other teams"

Wow what a persuasive argument for a Freo can.....

 

[Swanssince91]

"You got screwed when you entered the comp and now that's passed, you shouldn't complain as you get screwed by handouts to other teams"

Wow what a persuasive argument for a Freo can.....

Let's face it you have made some poor recruiting and contract decisions over the past 10 years

 

[Pommie Docker]

Let's face it you have made some poor recruiting and contract decisions over the past 10 years

Oh 110%, but does that mean we should then be disadvantaged going forward?

 

[Swanssince91]

Oh 110%, but does that mean we should then be disadvantaged going forward?

How are you disadvantaged?
You will probably steal our best young talent

 

[eastfreo75]

Take away?

 

[.Shotties.]

Yeah, I think you've had a leg up for to long.

Okay. Build your list from 90% interstate players for 30 years with almost zero access to home state players in the first two rounds and see how level that playing field is.

 

[Caligo]

No idea what that means but it looks pretty bad, particularly right now.

 

[.Shotties.]

The spelling, or the fact he's from SA?

I'll take that as a no, then.

 

[sr36]

"You got screwed when you entered the comp and now that's passed, you shouldn't complain as you get screwed by handouts to other teams"

Wow what a persuasive argument for a Freo can.....

30 years ago a different AFL admin made some shit decisions. They'd had two new enter the comp successfully and didn't factor in the advantages that those clubs had compared with Freo, so they didn't give you close to enough concessions. But that time has passed. It's not going to be re-written. You're currently a middling team, I think you've got a good enough list to be playing finals, but aren't getting the best out of it because you're playing a stodgy style that doesn't stack up against the teams going well.

I've got no idea why you think you should be getting concessions now. I don't think the Northern clubs should be either. I don't think being a middling team is worthy of concessions. The comp is so even that over half the teams are middling teams.

 

[eastfreo75]

No idea what that means but it looks pretty bad, particularly right now.

Grammar Nazi

 

[GC2015]

"Nobody batted an eye"? what???

People lost it so hard at daicos and juh before him. The juh drama was so high it caused a massive rule change.

Why bring up the JUH outrage when I was specifically discussing Nick Daicos? I remember the Ugle-Hagan outrage and how it led to the rule change. The same cannot be said about Nick Daicos and no one was discussing the possibility of changing the F/S rules because of the way the Pies secured Daicos. If there was outrage, it wasn't very loud. Certainly nowhere near as loud as the recent outrage directed at the Suns academy.

The McKay corruption? That was dodgy as heck. It is 100x more serious and important for the afl to deal with than gc getting a bit of help to make them more resilient against southern raiding.

It's no secret that the AFL wants teams in Queensland and NSW to succeed in order to increasing the chances of engaging the locals but clearly this isn't something the AFL can guarantee. Otherwise it would have already happened for the Suns. There's so many factors that play into succeeding as a football club and just throwing draft picks at a club doesn't necessarily achieve that. However, helping them in developing their own local high end draft talent is a step in the right direction.

 

[The Inbetweener]

Why bring up the JUH outrage when I was specifically discussing Nick Daicos? I remember the Ugle-Hagan outrage and how it led to the rule change. The same cannot be said about Nick Daicos and no one was discussing the possibility of changing the F/S rules because of the way the Pies secured Daicos. If there was outrage, it wasn't very loud. Certainly nowhere near as loud as the recent outrage directed at the Suns academy.


It's no secret that the AFL wants teams in Queensland and NSW to succeed in order to increasing the chances of engaging the locals but clearly this isn't something the AFL can guarantee. Otherwise it would have already happened for the Suns. There's so many factors that play into succeeding as a football club and just throwing draft picks at a club doesn't necessarily achieve that. However, helping them in developing their own local high end draft talent is a step in the right direction.

There was no outrage on Daicos as we are talking about one father son every so often. If it were 4 father sons in the first round with the likelihood of more to come each season ongoing, there would be the exact same outrage.

 

[The Inbetweener]

Conveniently ignoring the massive gift the VFL gave North. No Vic uproar about that. Now imagine it was the Swans who were basically gifted a top 5 pick. At least the GC thing was not at all dodgy

Huh? There was heaps of uproar about North’s package being too generous.

 

[Caligo]

Grammar Nazi

That is way better than I expected actually. Fair play.

 

[marcus1232]

I am pretty sure everyone is disgusted with the package north got that is not a north supporter.

A North Melbourne exec becomes AFL general manager of football and they get the package they get.

 

[GC2015]

There was no outrage on Daicos as we are talking about one father son every so often. If it were 4 father sons in the first round with the likelihood of more to come each season ongoing, there would be the exact same outrage.

So it's got nothing to do with the bidding rules and everything to do with stopping the Suns academy from succeeding? There's nothing stopping a club from doing the same thing using the F/S rule if they happen to have three or four highly rated F/S players come through in the same draft class. Look at Brisbane who secured pick 2 (W.Ashcroft) and pick 11 (Fletcher) through their F/S access last year. No one seemed to care that a team who just made a prelim was getting priority access to picks 2 and 11 when their natural first round pick should have been 15. Add in the fact that Brisbane made the GF this year and are going to get another top 3 F/S pick next year (L.Ashcroft). If the Suns had made a prelim this year then they would have only been able to secure pick 3 (Walter) and we would have seen pick 9 (Read) go to Geelong, pick 14 (Rogers) go to Sydney and pick 26 (Graham) go to Adelaide.

Do you see how inconsistent the outrage is? More than willing to criticise northern academy access but very quiet about F/S access. Is it because your club also stands to benefit from the F/S rule? That's selective outrage and just so it's clear, the Suns won't have any F/S picks for at least another 10 years.

 

[1970crow]

Curious - are people more annoyed at the Suns having access to four first round picks through the academy or that it was seemingly "easy" to secure them? Two separate issues.

Reckon the latter more than the former. Fix it and the access issue reduces significantly. Academies are no different to F/S, the idea that you get a discount and can use a bunch of crap picks is too much.

Just hold off on any fixes though, we’ve got an expected 1st round f/s coming up.

 

[bungalow_bill]

So it's got nothing to do with the bidding rules and everything to do with stopping the Suns academy from succeeding? There's nothing stopping a club from doing the same thing using the F/S rule if they happen to have three or four highly rated F/S players come through in the same draft class. Look at Brisbane who secured pick 2 (W.Ashcroft) and pick 11 (Fletcher) through their F/S access last year. No one seemed to care that a team who just made a prelim was getting priority access to picks 2 and 11 when their natural first round pick should have been 15. Add in the fact that Brisbane made the GF this year and are going to get another top 3 F/S pick next year (L.Ashcroft). If the Suns had made a prelim this year then they would have only been able to secure pick 3 (Walter) and we would have seen pick 9 (Read) go to Geelong, pick 14 (Rogers) go to Sydney and pick 26 (Graham) go to Adelaide.

Do you see how inconsistent the outrage is? More than willing to criticise northern academy access but very quiet about F/S access. Is it because your club also stands to benefit from the F/S rule? That's selective outrage and just so it's clear, the Suns won't have any F/S picks for at least another 10 years.

Certain Vic clubs and the AFL in general will never have a negative thing to say about the F/S rule. Particularly the Cats Pies Blues and the Dogs

 

[Pommie Docker]

30 years ago a different AFL admin made some s**t decisions. They'd had two new enter the comp successfully and didn't factor in the advantages that those clubs had compared with Freo, so they didn't give you close to enough concessions. But that time has passed. It's not going to be re-written. You're currently a middling team, I think you've got a good enough list to be playing finals, but aren't getting the best out of it because you're playing a stodgy style that doesn't stack up against the teams going well.

I've got no idea why you think you should be getting concessions now. I don't think the Northern clubs should be either. I don't think being a middling team is worthy of concessions. The comp is so even that over half the teams are middling teams.

I don't think we should be getting concessions and I also think that other teams shouldn't be getting concessions that then disadvantage us, in a zero sum game like the draft. I don't think anyone has said Freo should get concessions so weird that you would base your argument around that.