Strahany
Premiership Player
Don’t agree. If anything it’s you who are trying to be too broad in your interpretation that pp guidelines in any way are there to react to injuries.
You could make an argument that there are no guidelines on injury impact to teams and pps so the afl have free hand to do what they want in exceptional circumstances but there is zero support for injuries allowing pps within the current guidelines themselves
The idea of that rule is to prevent a low-finishing anomaly across 1-2 seasons from granting an unnecessary priority pick. e.g a team with regular finals finishes landing in the bottom 4 for 1-2 years. This team would then receive a top end pick, and use it to draft/trade to improve their list, which will be finals-bound once their injuries return.
We’re not in that category. We won’t “bounce back” after this season because, not only were we not a finals-quality team prior to these injuries, such that their return will launch us up the ladder; these are looking to be permanent injuries which will affect our list going forward, and not exclusively within these 1-2 years. This is the very purpose for priority picks; whether the AFL grants one or not is another question.