Resource FAQs: Rules, Regulations and Resources for Player Movements in the AFL

4.8 Players Bound if Listed
(a) A Player shall be bound to a Club if he is properly included on the Club's List in accordance with these Rules. This Rule does not apply to a Player listed on a Club’s Rookie List, in which case Rule 10.3 applies
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(b) If a contract between a Club and a Player expires on 31 October in any year, the Player shall remain registered as a Player of and be bound to the Club until the conclusion of the National Draft Selection Meeting in the relevant year. This Rule does not apply if the Club deletes the Player’s name from its List during the period 31 October until the time and day when the de-listed Player is able to nominate for the National Draft Selection Meeting under Rule 6.2(c).

(c) If a Player remains bound to a Club by reason of Rule 4.8(b), the Club must pay to the Player an allowance in the amount determined from time to time by the AFL and AFLPA.

What is that allowance? 1/12th the base payment of his pre 1st November contract? Rhetorical question as I'd assume the allownace is at least 1/12th the minimum base payment (other than a first year draft choice Player, a second year Player, a Rookie Player or a Player promoted from the Rookie List) which in 2019 is $105,000
 
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Alright.

Now, what happens if an uncontracted player doesn't nominate for the draft? Their contract expires at the end of said draft. Are they then eligible for the SSP?

That would look remarkably like total free agency.
SSP is only if they’ve spent a year out of the game after delisting themselves, retiring or being delisted by their club OR if they nominated for the most recent draft and don’t get picked up (and haven’t signed with a club to play as an overager in an U18s league).

If they are delisted by their club then they’re a DFA anyway which is much simpler, and once a free agent always a free agent as of the latest rule change.

So I think not eligible in the SSP immediately following the conclusion of their contract without going through the draft first.

 
State of Origin
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State of Origin

Some ballpark numbers on the state of origin of current AFL players, also shown by club and in comparison to the Australian population:

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Player Contracts and Stats
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The following was originally posted here: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/thre...agents-other-stats-live-spreadsheets.1207363/

Contract and Stats – Auto-Updating Spreadsheet

(May take a few seconds to load up)

Two years ago, Taylor and I created a series of spreadsheets tracking player contract, age, height and related data across the entire league.

These spreadsheets draw data from footywire, and are as up to date as footywire is on any given day. Over the off-season things tend to get a bit out of date, as footywire inevitably struggles to keep up with the news as players re-sign, are delisted, retire or change clubs.

Contracts and Free Agency Status

This information is also broken down into individual teams, which are pinned in each of the following club focus threads:

Adelaide
Brisbane Lions
Carlton
Collingwood
Essendon
Fremantle
Geelong
Gold Coast
GWS
Hawthorn
Melbourne
North Melbourne
Port Adelaide
Richmond
St Kilda
Sydney
West Coast
Western Bulldogs


Player Age by Club



Player Height by Club



Career Games by Club



Season Games by Club



Contract Lengths by Club



Premiership Teams of the last decade
 
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Great thread Lore, thanks for putting it all together.

Can you or someone else explain how some clubs have more than 44 players on their list (not including Cat-B rookies).

For example:
Gold Coast - 40 seniors + 7 Cat-A Rookies
West Coast - 40 + 7
Hawthorn - 40 + 7
Carlton - 39 + 6
Essendon - 39 + 6
 
Great thread Lore, thanks for putting it all together.

Can you or someone else explain how some clubs have more than 44 players on their list (not including Cat-B rookies).

For example:
Gold Coast - 40 seniors + 7 Cat-A Rookies
West Coast - 40 + 7
Hawthorn - 40 + 7
Carlton - 39 + 6
Essendon - 39 + 6
I think you're counting the category B rookies in there. Gold Coast is allowed extra rookies though. International/Alternative talent/NGA etc send players to category B list under conditions.
 
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Great thread Lore, thanks for putting it all together.

Can you or someone else explain how some clubs have more than 44 players on their list (not including Cat-B rookies).

For example:
Gold Coast - 40 seniors + 7 Cat-A Rookies
West Coast - 40 + 7
Hawthorn - 40 + 7
Carlton - 39 + 6
Essendon - 39 + 6
All of those numbers you've quoted would include category B rookies. Any discrepancies would most likely be due to players being placed on the inactive list, which opens up additional category A rookie spots.

So for example, Essendon had 40 senior listed players this year, 39 are active and 1 is inactive. We put Lachlan Johnson on the inactive list as soon as we drafted him due to having a long term injury (ACL) which opened up an extra spot, which we used on a category A rookie. We could also have gone with 40+4 instead of 39+5 and recruited someone to the senior list instead of a rookie. We also have two category B rookies for a total of 47.

Players can also be moved to the inactive list if they've retired over the pre-season, for example.
 
No, as I said, I wasn't counting Cat B rookies.
Using Bombers as an example; McQuillan and McBride are Cat-B which were not included in the 6 I mentioned (Draper, Snelling, Townsend, Hibberd, Hird, Crauford). The same applied to the other teams I mentioned. West Coast have 0 Cat-B rookies, but 7 Cat-A.

Putting Gold Coast aside, it seems a bit odd that teams might have up to 3 inactive players on their list. Noting it can only be done preseason before the drafts as there was no mid-season rookie draft this year.

Do you know if Inactive players are tracked anywhere?
 
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No, as I said, I wasn't counting Cat B rookies.
Using Bombers as an example; McQuillan and McBride are Cat-B which were not included in the 6 I mentioned (Draper, Snelling, Townsend, Hibberd, Hird, Crauford). The same applied to the other teams I mentioned. West Coast have 0 Cat-B rookies, but 7 Cat-A.

Putting Gold Coast aside, it seems a bit odd that teams might have up to 3 inactive players on their list. Noting it can only be done preseason before the drafts as there was no mid-season rookie draft this year.

Do you know if Inactive players are tracked anywhere?
Draper is on the senior list. Hird is Category B from an alternative talent pathway (he pursued soccer as a teen). One of the Irishmen is Category A, I forget which. You can only put one Irishman on the Category B list at a time.

I'd say wherever your info is from is not quite accurate.
 
Draper is on the senior list. Hird is Category B from an alternative talent pathway (he pursued soccer as a teen). One of the Irishmen is Category A, I forget which. You can only put one Irishman on the Category B list at a time.

I'd say wherever your info is from is not quite accurate.
Fair enough, I guess I'm going off some outdated info.
 
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If this needs to be moved then all good.

I have taken the compo formula as outlined in an article by Jake Niall a couple of years ago.

It says:
- all players 25+ are ranked by salary
- they then get a score of 0-100
- they then add points for age: 25 (12), 26 (10), 27 (8), 28 (6), 29 (4), 30 (2), 31+ (0)
- this gives all players a score between 0-112
- these scores are then used to work out the players with the x% highest scores to see who fits into bands
- the bands are Band 1 (0-5%), band 2 (5-15%), band 3 (15-30%), band 4 (30-50%) and band 5 (50-?%). They didnt specify when band 5 cuts off and no compo is paid.

For the output below I assumed that there is an even number of players aged 25-31+. This probably isn't right, and could always re-do it with better data.

It means you can look at a player, knowing his age, and you can see what sort of salary they need to qualify for each compo band. This still means you have to guess their salary compared to other players aged 25+, but I suppose it is a step forward from the current guessing approach.

Interested in any feedback e.g. if I've made mistakes or just generally.

View attachment 977966
I think this looks good. Obviously I've moved it to the resource thread so people can find it and it won't fall off the first page and into oblivion 😊

The strange thing is that the bands vary slightly from year to year. Like it's not strange when you think about it, but on face value the same contract for a player of the same age falling within a different band one year to the next seems bizarre.

In one of the other posts in this thread I was adding some data around what compensation has been awarded for free agents in different years with their average salary and age, and there seems to be more of a bottleneck trying to get into band 1 some years than others.

I think part of it is because the salary cap changes, so a player on "significantly more than 500k per year" in 2012 was a pretty high salary at the time, and attracted band 1 compensation (Goddard), but a 700k wage now is more upper middle, and can actually fall into band 2 (Rockliff).

So it sort of depends what other contracts are in the system at the time as to whether the new contract is in the top 5% or not.


I'm also kind of curious how the 5% thing works. Is it top 5% of all players, top 5% of players over 25, or top 5% of contracts? In other words, is it the top 15 paid players in the league over 25 (there are about 300 over that age atm), or is it the salaries that fall within 5% of the highest salary – So if the top salary averages 950,000 per year, then the top 5% would be earning 902,500 - 950,000. There may only be 6 players in that group.
 
Aug 22, 2009
24,443
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AFL Club
West Coast
I think this looks good. Obviously I've moved it to the resource thread so people can find it and it won't fall off the first page and into oblivion 😊

The strange thing is that the bands vary slightly from year to year. Like it's not strange when you think about it, but on face value the same contract for a player of the same age falling within a different band one year to the next seems bizarre.

In one of the other posts in this thread I was adding some data around what compensation has been awarded for free agents in different years with their average salary and age, and there seems to be more of a bottleneck trying to get into band 1 some years than others.

I think part of it is because the salary cap changes, so a player on "significantly more than 500k per year" in 2012 was a pretty high salary at the time, and attracted band 1 compensation (Goddard), but a 700k wage now is more upper middle, and can actually fall into band 2 (Rockliff).

So it sort of depends what other contracts are in the system at the time as to whether the new contract is in the top 5% or not.


I'm also kind of curious how the 5% thing works. Is it top 5% of all players, top 5% of players over 25, or top 5% of contracts? In other words, is it the top 15 paid players in the league over 25 (there are about 300 over that age atm), or is it the salaries that fall within 5% of the highest salary – So if the top salary averages 950,000 per year, then the top 5% would be earning 902,500 - 950,000. There may only be 6 players in that group.

Cheers. Good points.

my understanding is all from https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl...free-agency-compensation-20180221-p4z16j.html

The article says is that it’s top x% or players aged 25+. So if there were 300 players in that group, then the top 15 are in the top 5%.

And that it’s based off guaranteed base salary, and its just on annual amount so long as it’s at least a two year deal
 
Aug 22, 2009
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AFL Club
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So if publicly available data includes incentives, then it isn’t as useful for assessing compo as data that only relates to guaranteed salary.

Im not sure what % of final remuneration is usually from base and what is from incentives. But if players were ever going to be having a lower % guaranteed, crouch, Daniher and Williams would all fall into that category.
 
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So if publicly available data includes incentives, then it isn’t as useful for assessing compo as data that only relates to guaranteed salary.

Im not sure what % of final remuneration is usually from base and what is from incentives. But if players were ever going to be having a lower % guaranteed, crouch, Daniher and Williams would all fall into that category.
Yeah exactly. It's tricky with players that have injuries like that, where most of their contract ends up being based on incentive payments, because at the trade table the potential counts for something, but compensation wise it doesn't.
 
Aug 22, 2009
24,443
28,011
AFL Club
West Coast
Yeah exactly. It's tricky with players that have injuries like that, where most of their contract ends up being based on incentive payments, because at the trade table the potential counts for something, but compensation wise it doesn't.

Yeah true.

I reckon the biggest issue is that there is equalisation for bands 1, 3 and 5 but not bands 2 and 4. It makes no sense to have it for some bands but not others.
 
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Yeah true.

I reckon the biggest issue is that there is equalisation for bands 1, 3 and 5 but not bands 2 and 4. It makes no sense to have it for some bands but not others.
The compensation at band 2 and 4 does end up in reverse ladder order, but of course there aren't enough of them at this stage to make a realistic difference.
 
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Lore

I had a skim through and may have missed the answer, but I was wondering if you knew whether players needed to have nominated for the latest draft to be eligible for recruitment via the SSP.

e.g. can someone who missed out in the 2019 draft be picked up this summer in the SSP without nominating for the 2020 draft?
I'm not totally sure, it's another mechanism that they haven't bothered to elaborate on much.

The article below suggests that if they fall through one draft then that's enough to qualify, as long as they don't go back into an academy as a 19yo:

"The rules mean any player who previously nominated for the draft or retired, delisted himself or was delisted and spent a year out of the AFL becomes a free agent of sorts."

 
Aug 22, 2009
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I'm not totally sure, it's another mechanism that they haven't bothered to elaborate on much.

The article below suggests that if they fall through one draft then that's enough to qualify, as long as they don't go back into an academy as a 19yo:

"The rules mean any player who previously nominated for the draft or retired, delisted himself or was delisted and spent a year out of the AFL becomes a free agent of sorts."


Cheers.

I was having a look in relation to Alec Waterman. I know they released the names of all 800-odd players who nominated for the 2019 draft, but I can only find it behind a paywall. You don't have a link to this do you (or know if Waterman nominated last year)?
 
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Cheers.

I was having a look in relation to Alec Waterman. I know they released the names of all 800-odd players who nominated for the 2019 draft, but I can only find it behind a paywall. You don't have a link to this do you (or know if Waterman nominated last year)?
I have no idea where to get that info haha, is it a newspaper paywall or something else?
 
Draft Resource Threads 2020

Ants

Premiership Player
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I don’t think it’s mentioned that you only get picks in the draft matching your available list spots. So teams can’t collect 6 3rd rounders to pay for an academy pick anymore

 
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I don’t think it’s mentioned that you only get picks in the draft matching your available list spots. So teams can’t collect 6 3rd rounders to pay for an academy pick anymore

Good catch. I've just added a bit about that to the linked post about academy bid matching:

"The AFL has ruled that the number of selections a club holds going into the national draft must match the number of vacant spots on their primary list, meaning that clubs will no longer be able to activate "hidden picks" during the draft in order to access academy players." – Thanks to @Ants for the link: Emma Quayle, 2016. (The Age)
 
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