- May 28, 2008
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ESSENDON has warned the AFL that the availability of the best draft picks to the AFL's northern start-up teams should be staggered and new clubs required to trade some top picks to avoid creating super teams and potentially cripple the bottom clubs.
The Bombers believe that giving the new Gold Coast team picks 1 to 5 in each of several drafts would risk artificially creating a super team while simultaneously inflicting unnecessary and excessive pain on those taking their turn at the foot of the ladder.
"The thing that concerns me most is (that) the first ambit claim from the AFL put before the clubs denies the normal benefits any existing club gets when they bottom out for the period of time and I just don't think that is fair," Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson said.
"You have clubs up near the top now — Hawthorn are one — who were down the bottom in 2000 and 2001 when Essendon were sitting on the top.
"These cycles happen and it is a normal and accepted part of keeping the competition even and rejuvenated but if you give away the first five draft picks and pre-season picks then over that three years, there are going to be clubs, depending on where their cycle is at at the time, who are going to miss out on a rebuilding exercise and could stay down in the doldrums for an extended period of time. You could have six or eight clubs down in the doldrums as a result.
"That is because the two or three or four who are down there when the concessions are first given will stay there and four others might join them as they go through their cycle through that three or four-year period."
Essendon has proposed that instead of picks 1 to 5 in the drafts the new franchise be given alternate picks (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) or possibly even staggering the picks more sparingly than that.
"I don't know if it is 1, 3, 5 or 2, 4, 6, it might even be wider spread than that because you have to give other clubs a chance to build as well," Jackson said.
"The detail is to be bashed out but the principle in our submission to the AFL is that the clubs that are going through their down cycle need to be able to take advantage of the draft picks like any club in recent history has that is sitting up there in the top four. It should not be that you are punished from pure bad luck on your timing cycle. You have to smooth that out some way or another, how you do it though is the issue."
There is further concern that the new club would be given a total of about 80 draft picks before entering the competition for a possible 50 places on the list.
Essendon, which is 14th on the ladder and second-favourite for the wooden spoon, believes there is a danger that unless the new club is required to trade some of the best picks, any new coach would insist that none of these quality picks be traded and the cream of the young players be blooded, with the club weathering a couple of years of pain, before the top 10 picks would mature to form the nucleus of a formidable side capable of carrying the club for a decade.
"The clubs finishing 14, 15, 16 have to have some ability to get into the top five or six draft picks as well as the other new clubs," Jackson said.
Just a question to you guys, do we think were one of those clubs that will have an extended run down the bottom, or will we just beat it?
The Bombers believe that giving the new Gold Coast team picks 1 to 5 in each of several drafts would risk artificially creating a super team while simultaneously inflicting unnecessary and excessive pain on those taking their turn at the foot of the ladder.
"The thing that concerns me most is (that) the first ambit claim from the AFL put before the clubs denies the normal benefits any existing club gets when they bottom out for the period of time and I just don't think that is fair," Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson said.
"You have clubs up near the top now — Hawthorn are one — who were down the bottom in 2000 and 2001 when Essendon were sitting on the top.
"These cycles happen and it is a normal and accepted part of keeping the competition even and rejuvenated but if you give away the first five draft picks and pre-season picks then over that three years, there are going to be clubs, depending on where their cycle is at at the time, who are going to miss out on a rebuilding exercise and could stay down in the doldrums for an extended period of time. You could have six or eight clubs down in the doldrums as a result.
"That is because the two or three or four who are down there when the concessions are first given will stay there and four others might join them as they go through their cycle through that three or four-year period."
Essendon has proposed that instead of picks 1 to 5 in the drafts the new franchise be given alternate picks (1, 3, 5, 7, 9 or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) or possibly even staggering the picks more sparingly than that.
"I don't know if it is 1, 3, 5 or 2, 4, 6, it might even be wider spread than that because you have to give other clubs a chance to build as well," Jackson said.
"The detail is to be bashed out but the principle in our submission to the AFL is that the clubs that are going through their down cycle need to be able to take advantage of the draft picks like any club in recent history has that is sitting up there in the top four. It should not be that you are punished from pure bad luck on your timing cycle. You have to smooth that out some way or another, how you do it though is the issue."
There is further concern that the new club would be given a total of about 80 draft picks before entering the competition for a possible 50 places on the list.
Essendon, which is 14th on the ladder and second-favourite for the wooden spoon, believes there is a danger that unless the new club is required to trade some of the best picks, any new coach would insist that none of these quality picks be traded and the cream of the young players be blooded, with the club weathering a couple of years of pain, before the top 10 picks would mature to form the nucleus of a formidable side capable of carrying the club for a decade.
"The clubs finishing 14, 15, 16 have to have some ability to get into the top five or six draft picks as well as the other new clubs," Jackson said.
Just a question to you guys, do we think were one of those clubs that will have an extended run down the bottom, or will we just beat it?
