St Kilda complain about priority draft access in Oct 2024; now set to gain priority access to a first / second round pick via their NGA access

[Chip Scab1]

lol no asterisk mate one of the greatest premierships of all time and every chance to go back to back, it’s a great time to be a lion supporter but sure if you want an asterisk next to it go for it lol

I don't want... I have nothing against Queensland from May-August. Great place. But you'll always have an asterisk unfortunately.

Ah those warriors of 1922.

 

[mighty_lions]

I don't want... I have nothing against Queensland from May-August. Great place. But you'll always have an asterisk unfortunately.

Ah those warriors of 1922.

It’s good to see you are all worked up at 7 in the morning on a Wednesday, reigning premiers one of the greatest premierships of all time, they are having a conversation on sen right now about how confident you are of your team winning a premiership, unfortunately for you you will be long gone

 

[Chip Scab1]

It’s good to see you are all worked up at 7 in the morning on a Wednesday, reigning premiers one of the greatest premierships of all time, they are having a conversation on sen right now about how confident you are of your team winning a premiership, unfortunately for you you will be long gone

Worked up? I get up at 4 so it's mid-morning for me.

SEN? Please. There's more sense made (from more intelligent people) at your local Centrelink waiting room.

I'm not so worried big boy, I have seen 2, wouldn't mind seeing another (sure).

Glad Brisbane has supporters like you, everything the AFL is doing for the northern states is clearly working.

 

[mighty_lions]

Worked up? I get up at 4 so it's mid-morning for me.

SEN? Please. There's more sense made (from more intelligent people) at your local Centrelink waiting room.

I'm not so worried big boy, I have seen 2, wouldn't mind seeing another (sure).

Glad Brisbane has supporters like you, everything the AFL is doing for the northern states is clearly working.

2! That’s exciting and none this century and none coming in the near future anyway good job derailing the thread

 

[StevoJenkins]

The argument was that AFL talent would otherwise choose NRL in Queensland without academies. That’s factually incorrect as evidenced by the 40+ players since late 1980s/early 1990s up until 2011 who have been recruited from Queensland, noting this list isn’t even exhaustive.

GC2015 (the legend he is) has given a better response than I could write to address this. Refer to the below:

You listed 28 players over a 26-year period (1985-2011). In what world could that possibly be considered a body of success? 1 draftee a year from the third largest state is hardly anything to write home about. To put it in context, Victoria had 28 players drafted in the first 33 national draft picks last year alone! How many Queenslanders were drafted last year? 3 total and 1 of them was a rookie pick. Now I know some may point to 2023 and say Queensland had 5 draftees that year, but then if you go back to 2022 you'll find only 2 Queenslanders were drafted and 2021 saw just 1 Queenslander drafted into the AFL. The disparity between Queensland and Victoria in terms of draftees is really obvious, whether it's in the academy era or not.

Now unless you can provide numbers on NRL kids converting to AFL, you cannot claim that my response, or the response of the poster you were responding to, is incorrect by your own metric. You are scraping the bottom of the barrel and trying to use the absolute bare minimum to support a point that you can't support anyway.

Clearly, there’s a level of success with pooling talent from Queensland. No one is saying the pool of talent is proportionate to Vic/WA/et, but to say it’s so dire without academies that there will be no talent due to it being diverted into NFL is factually incorrect. The state representation for remaining states across the draft is besides the point when every club gets equal access to that talent and equal mechanisms to attract and retain that talent. You’re able to draft that talent with the same level of access just like every other club, then you get to double dip while finishing top of the ladder and getting pushed up to the top of the draft.

I repeat, 40+ players over 40 years is not a success is any way, shape or form, unless you have an agenda, which is clearly your position.

It's almost as if there's a history of not a lot of Queensland based talent available each year at the draft and then, when you implement an academy, the available players increase year on year. It's almost like it should increase the available talent every year.

Now the argument generally is, should the northern clubs have priority access to these kids? The answer is yes, because a lot of these guys would not be drafted otherwise. Look at Coleman and Bruce on the Lions list, they were both passed on and stayed in the academy for an additional year, then got drafted. Alternatively, look at Payne and Andrews. Payne was a shot putt athlete and Andrews was a late pick. These guys were very unlikely (bar Andrews) to be drafted.

We (Saints) share a talent pool with 9 other clubs, so we’re actually working of a relatively diluted talent pool and really don’t have any mechanisms to attract and retain talent in comparison to the Northern academies.

The draft is basically the only mechanism of equality we can rely upon and it’s an absolute rort when first round draft hands are being pushed out behind 30 picks. No one can honestly argue that’s a good thing.

Once again, there’s more appropriate mechanisms to continuing to grow the game in Northern zones without firmly embedding it into the draft without paying fair value. All it does is serve the AFL’s commercial interests and your club’s own interest.

So there's a few things to unpack here. Firstly, there's the equality of the draft. Until the draft pools are at least somewhat equal, there will be no equality in the draft.

The Saints may share a draft pool with the rest of the Victorian clubs, but being a Victorian club in itself is an advantage. Players are generally drawn to their home state, and thus by being a Victorian club, the Saints (or any other VIC club for that matter) will be better suited to retain talent, due to the fact that the majority of the talent pool is Victorian. Having maybe 5 kids from the northern states drafted a year is not equal in itself.

Secondly, do you think that the northern clubs are always going to draft every high pick, every draft? This year my club will most likely match for Annable, then that will most likely be it (bar any players leave that give the Lions more draft capital). There are other academy members who are good and will be drafted, but they won't be drafted by Brisbane. We saw this when Richmond a few years ago draft Noah Cumberland and Sampson Ryan.

The idea of an academy is twofold - provide the northern clubs with players who are less likely to leave for elsewhere, and to increase the talent pool. The AFL lets the clubs choose to have access to the players they want, then the rest get put into the draft. Eventually, there will be too much talent for every club to grab, and other clubs will reap the benefits. The only thing that's needed is time.

As I pointed out in my response to you, the Lions have drafted 7 players from their academy in its history. To say that we've rorted the system is silly, because 3 of those seven were top 20 (Hipwood 2015 (19), Blake Coleman 2021 (21), Marhsall 2024 (23)), 4 if you want to count Ben Keays at pick 24 (you are welcome Crows fans). I think recency bias is majority of the issues with the academies, and whilst you can focus on 2/3 years of the draft, you have to look at the bigger picture and the trend that is emerging.

 

[Tasmanian saint]

not quite it was 10% which was not an extra million dollars but lets not let facts get in the way of your story from 25 years ago, and quite rightly for having a percentage of interstate players which is now what the academies address
But lets drill down further it was 500k with a list of 40, a whopping $13k per player a huge advantage considering players have to relocate to a different state

that really won us 3 in a row ! a huge 13k each!

At the time Was sold buy the afl as a cost of living allowance I can understand it for Sydney , but don’t know how anyone thought at afl house thought that Brisbane could be more expensive to live than Melbourne or Perth nothing more than a absolute rort . When you talk about how tight salary caps get for teams that are contending 10% extra is a massive amount , and helped Brisbane to be able to keep one of the most talented teams ever together for a long period of time.

 

[mighty_lions]

At the time Was sold buy the afl as a cost of living allowance I can understand it for Sydney , but don’t know how anyone thought at afl house thought that Brisbane could be more expensive to live than Melbourne or Perth nothing more than a absolute rort . When you talk about how tight salary caps get for teams that are contending 10% extra is a massive amount , and helped Brisbane to be able to keep one of the most talented teams ever together for a long period of time.

No it was not, it was to help recruit and retain players in non traditional afl states, something the academies now do which you want to scrap

The COLA was for Sydney and GWS, and then when Sydney used it with in the rules to recruit Buddy the AFL banned them from trading actually unbelievable and the biggest disgrace ever

 

[Tasmanian saint]

No it was not, it was to help recruit and retain players in non traditional afl states, something the academies now do which you want to scrap

The COLA was for Sydney and GWS, and then when Sydney used it with in the rules to recruit Buddy the AFL banned them from trading actually unbelievable and the biggest disgrace ever

You mean when Sydney used a cost of living allowance that was supposed to be spread across a whole playing list , on one high profile free agent yep nothing at all wrong here

 

[Johnny Bananas]

Our executive might be mistaken but it is not a deliberate distraction. Our picks consistently get shunted lower and lower in the draft. I'm happy to run the experiment on an uncompromised draft to see if we can return up the ladder: the last time the draft was so unencumbered we were bottom 3 for 3 years and then started a run two years later where we played in 5 prelims and 2 grand finals in 7 years, with an administration, recruiting and home base not nearly as professional as it is now.

Uncompromised? What nonsense. Your team was gifted extra top 5 picks in 2000 and 2001, then lucked out in 2002 to get the #1 pick again after Carlton's salary cap rorting penalties. And the AFL gave you Riewoldt by severely cutting back Brisbane's zone.

 

[The Punter]

Uncompromised? What nonsense. Your team was gifted extra top 5 picks in 2000 and 2001, then lucked out in 2002 to get the #1 pick again after Carlton's salary cap rorting penalties. And the AFL gave you Riewoldt by severely cutting back Brisbane's zone.

The draft is meant to help the bottom teams up the ladder: I would have thought a socialist could understand that.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

The draft is meant to help the bottom teams up the ladder: I would have thought a socialist could understand that.

I've outlined my response to this already in another thread, which I'll quote here.

The problem with the draft as an equalisation measure is, it isn't great in terms of short-term results. Rookie players are rarely great right out of the gates, so even one as talented as Harley Reid can't stop West Coast from being poor. It's a delayed equalisation measure, and that's if the club can develop talent properly. There's the risk that a bad club is like the early Gold Coast Suns, with such poor culture and coaching that they take the best talent in the country and turn them into career underachievers. Who knows if David Swallow or Jack Martin could have been superstars somewhere else?

In this respect the NRL does have a better system, because talent can be developed at good clubs and then spread around through contract offers and salary cap limitations. And I'd argue using cap space to throw money at veterans is the better and quicker way to make a bad team competitive. The NRL Bulldogs have gone from the bottom three in 2023 to top of the ladder right now on the back of signing good veterans. Even the rise of the Lions was built off signing experienced players like Neale and Cameron and Daniher rather than purely from draft picks.

In short, the draft doesn't work as a short-term equalisation measure, only medium-term and long-term. To send a team up the ladder quickly, they need to sign or trade for experienced veterans. The things that really got Brisbane going were Charlie Cameron and Lachie Neale.

Regardless, don't make laughable claims like St Kilda profiting from an "uncompromised" draft from 2000-2002.

 

[Tom14]

The draft is meant to help the bottom teams up the ladder: I would have thought a socialist could understand that.

A socialist would oppose the draft as a restriction on the ability of a worker (the player) to fully realise (earn) the fruits of their labour.

Its an artificial restriction on pay.

 

[The Punter]

I've outlined my response to this already in another thread, which I'll quote here.



In short, the draft doesn't work as a short-term equalisation measure, only medium-term and long-term. To send a team up the ladder quickly, they need to sign or trade for experienced veterans. The things that really got Brisbane going were Charlie Cameron and Lachie Neale.

Regardless, don't make laughable claims like St Kilda profiting from an "uncompromised" draft from 2000-2002.

It used to work as a short-medium term measure. It doesn't any more, and we have proof in results. North have finished bottom two for five consecutive years. That used to be long enough, and it is not any more.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

Really? In 2023 Gold Coast took 4 players in round 1 (Picks 3, 9, 14, 26)! Every selection was a matched bid. No other team could take these players.

Yeah they could have. If Walter and Read went 1 and 2, Gold Coast would have run out of picks to match with and gone into deficit. Doubt they would have been able to match first round bids on the others at that point. Also the new system is tougher, if an academy player goes at #1, it's doubtful that the team could match another top 10 pick at all unless they've built up a huge hand of picks beforehand.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

It used to work as a short-medium term measure.

No it didn't. It was always accompanied by veteran signings. St Kilda had Hamill and Gehrig and others too. Go back to the 90s and plenty of players were recruited from outside the draft altogether.

 

[The Punter]

No it didn't. It was always accompanied by veteran signings. St Kilda had Hamill and Gehrig and others too. Go back to the 90s and plenty of players were recruited from outside the draft altogether.

And North Melbourne have signed veteran players from other clubs too. But Sam Darcy plays for the Dogs because of who his dad is. Nick Daicos also unavailable in 2021 draft to every team but one, because of who his dad is.

Y'all happy to suffer a bastardised draft because you benefit. It's obvious.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

And North Melbourne have signed veteran players from other clubs too.

Yeah, bad ones.

But Sam Darcy plays for the Dogs because of who his dad is. Nick Daicos also unavailable in 2021 draft to every team but one, because of who his dad is.

Father/son existed back then too. But I've already said to you that I'm happy to axe father/sons.

Y'all happy to suffer a bastardised draft because you benefit. It's obvious.

If you want us to kill off the academies, we'll just draft more Victorians. The talented Queensland and NSW kids will either be lost to the game or won't be as good as how the academies have developed them. So they will very rarely be drafted in the first round. And St Kilda won't have access to the Victorian kids Northern clubs draft, and wouldn't have many first round talents from northern states to pick from.

 

[The Punter]

Yeah, bad ones.


Father/son existed back then too. But I've already said to you that I'm happy to axe father/sons.


If you want us to kill off the academies, we'll just draft more Victorians. The talented Queensland and NSW kids will either be lost to the game or won't be as good as how the academies have developed them. So they will very rarely be drafted in the first round. And St Kilda won't have access to the Victorian kids Northern clubs draft, and wouldn't have many first round talents from northern states to pick from.

Others want to kill the northern academies. I want to abolish the others and limit the northern ones to one pick outside the draft. Simpler, fairer, easier to understand. We agree on the father-son rule.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

Others want to kill the northern academies. I want to abolish the others and limit the northern ones to one pick outside the draft. Simpler, fairer, easier to understand. We agree on the father-son rule.

What a pity if an academy produces zero draftable prospects for a few years then is unlucky enough to have two at once. Outside of that it's a reasonable system.

 

[The Punter]

What a pity if an academy produces zero draftable prospects for a few years then is unlucky enough to have two at once. Outside of that it's a reasonable system.

Considering the work the clubs are putting into their academies, I would think that unlikely. And I'd also be happy for a post-pick 50 concession on any not nominated academy player who gets through that many picks. I can see homegrown talent as a benefit to the league, but I want the draft to be where the talent playing field gets levelled as it was only designed to do.

 

[mighty_lions]

You mean when Sydney used a cost of living allowance that was supposed to be spread across a whole playing list , on one high profile free agent yep nothing at all wrong here

you mean complying to the rules, you are a joke

They AFL also came up with bullshit to make Sydney pay every cent even if Buddy retired because they thought the contract was bullshit, he signed another contract after it!

 

[Elixuh]

Others want to kill the northern academies. I want to abolish the others and limit the northern ones to one pick outside the draft. Simpler, fairer, easier to understand. We agree on the father-son rule.

I’d say Fred Bassett and your club would be strongly opposed to this.

 

[The Punter]

I’d say Fred Bassett and your club would be strongly opposed to this.

I'll have to live with a fictional comic strip dog not seeing the world the way I do.

 

[Elixuh]

I'll have to live with a fictional comic strip dog not seeing the world the way I do.

I always get the two mixed up

 

[The Punter]

I always get the two mixed up

Most people can tell the difference.