Wrong
The AFL 's first press release was on 15 May 2009 and included the following;
"As part of the entry rules for the Gold Coast side, the AFL Commission resolved that any club that lost a player to the expansion side would be eligible for a compensation pick (after the entry of both Gold Coast and the second club to be based in Sydney).
Compensation picks will be tradeable and can be used by clubs at any time within five years. First round compensation picks cannot be used until the end of the first round in the 2010 and 2011 drafts. Clubs will be required to nominate the year in which they plan to use the compensation pick before the first round of the Toyota AFL Premiership Season in that particular year.
The compensatory pick would be assessed around the player’s age (greater weighting for younger players), club contract ranking (greater weighting for club key players), onfield performance (greater weighting for strong club best and fairest performance) and draft position if less than four years experience.
This ranking system will then determine if a club is eligible for a compensatory pick in one of five spots - first-round pick, end-of-first-round pick, second-round pick, end-of-second-round pick or third-round pick. Under the model, the round-one, round-two or round-three picks would be taken immediately after the pick the club already has in that round in the draft that year."
It was not clear what a player like Tippett would be worth but given the expectation that Ablett would be a round 1 pick then Tippett was expected to attract an end of round one at best and possibly a round two pick. This was the only information available when the "agreement" was made with Tippett. The improvement in compensation was announced in June 2010.