Free Agency Tom Rockliff [signed with Port Adelaide]

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The_Reaper said:
Talking post 2006 and you have to really take into account free agency and the introduction of Gold Coast/GWS taking out a lot of the best young talent.

Those are massive factors and make it so you can't just go pre 2006 we had priority and post 2006 we had priority.
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Well, since I argue FA has worked against equalisation I definitely don't attribute everything to the removal of priority picks! :) I also think that requiring clubs to pay out most of the salary cap also hurts, as it means poor teams have to over-pay average players, reducing their ability to create war chests to poach good players. How long since the PSD was actually a mechanism to get talent to bottom teams?

I agree that the introduction of those clubs had an impact. However, I don't think it should have had near the impact it did.
 
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Sweet Jesus said:
The draft and salary cap are sufficient. How would we expand on those?

So your solution is to arbitrarily hand out extra picks under the guise of FA compensation?

Again, do you accept that this flies in the face of the AFL's stated policy that FA compensation is not meant to be full compensation?

Surely, if that is the AFL's position, it is a glaring inconsistency for some teams to be over-compensated.

I don't see how that's defensible.

They have that. Whether they're good enough to get there is another matter.

Good luck to those clubs for being able to keep a list together.

Did Franklin take a pay cut to join Sydney?

If the draft is such a joke, then what good would it do to give s**t teams extra picks?

You've just said the draft is a joke and achieves very little in terms of equalisation. I disagree completely but how can you write off the draft as an equalisation mechanism, only to turn around and say the draft should be used more as an equalisation mechanism?

Either it works or it doesn't.

My argument is that we shouldn't go any further. Certainly, just handing out extra draft picks arbitrarily isn't the answer.

If a club is really s**t for a prolonged period, the AFL has the discretion to give them another draft pick. I have no problem with that. But it shouldn't be automatically triggered or assigned in an ad hoc manner under the guise of FA compensation.

Beyond that, I'm not really sure what you'd propose. There is a system for player movement that all clubs are subject to. You can't exempt some clubs and, as an example, somehow force Jesse Hogan to stay at Melbourne. You can't engineer a system to ensure Melbourne or Carlton or whoever draft well. We've got a draft and a salary cap and it's up to individual clubs to be competitive within those parameters. The onus is not on the AFL to engineer equal outcomes. The onus is on the clubs to get better.
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My point is the draft isn't sufficient to equalise, that the idea that it is sufficient on its own is a joke. Not that it should be abolished, or has no effect whatsoever. It partly works, but is nowhere near enough. Hence why I believe it should be boosted.

My response would be that every team finishing bottom 4 gets an additional pick after the non-finalists, or one before the first round if its the second time it happens in a two year period. Yes, it means teams like Collingwood 2005 and Fremantle 2016 get lucky, but I'm willing to take that flaw to give teams perennially near the bottom in an 18 team competition the leg up they need to overcome the deficit of talent in their lists.

Such an approach also takes out the "discretion" element of priority picks, which might help with the perception of the AFL as fiddling for its own desired ends.

It is pretty much established that ALL the top teams now get discounts on player salaries. It isn't "good on em", its standard practice. Which would be fine and dandy as an equalisation method if players were leaving left right and centre for money, but few do. So its effect is significantly, if not entirely, mitigated. Made worse by the AFL's requirement in the last 10 years that clubs pay out a huge amount of the salary cap, which reduces their ability to create a war chest and offer top teams' players ridiculous amounts of money. Sydney and Franklin were a result of a different loophole (which I'd happily see closed) that gave Sydney additional salary cap. Hardly an argument for or against the salary cap's effectiveness when the rules are being distorted by AFL favouritism.
 

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Ants said:
My point is the draft isn't sufficient to equalise, that the idea that it is sufficient on its own is a joke. Not that it should be abolished, or has no effect whatsoever. It partly works, but is nowhere near enough. Hence why I believe it should be boosted.
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Draft and salary cap combined are as much equalisation as is desirable.

A new mechanism that automatically triggers extra draft picks would create more issues that it would solve.

Ants said:
My response would be that every team finishing bottom 4 gets an additional pick after the non-finalists, or one before the first round if its the second time it happens in a two year period. Yes, it means teams like Collingwood 2005 and Fremantle 2016 get lucky, but I'm willing to take that flaw to give teams perennially near the bottom in an 18 team competition the leg up they need to overcome the deficit of talent in their lists.
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That's unnecessary. You don't need to automatically trigger an extra pick for a team like Freo in 2016.

That's a recipe for frustration and cynicism.

If a team is really bad for several years, the AFL can hand out an extra pick at their discretion. That's fine. But I see no argument for these extra picks to be triggered automatically.

Ants said:
Such an approach also takes out the "discretion" element of priority picks, which might help with the perception of the AFL as fiddling for its own desired ends.
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What's wrong with the discretion element?

That's preferable to them being triggered automatically, which creates a perception that tanking is incentivised.

Ants said:
It is pretty much established that ALL the top teams now get discounts on player salaries. It isn't "good on em", its standard practice. Which would be fine and dandy as an equalisation method if players were leaving left right and centre for money, but few do.
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On the other hand, Hawthorn lost a player like Franklin to FA. A prime example that kicks against what you're saying.

Besides, Hawthorn aside, the top teams have chopped and changed in recent years.

I mean, when you say 'the top teams', who are you talking about? Hawthorn, Sydney, Geelong, North, GWS, WC, Adelaide, Bulldogs – Freo and Port have made a GF and PF in recent times. It's not like there's just 2-3 teams with a monopoly and then daylight.

Ants said:
Sydney and Franklin were a result of a different loophole (which I'd happily see closed) that gave Sydney additional salary cap. Hardly an argument for or against the salary cap's effectiveness when the rules are being distorted by AFL favouritism.
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The Swans were smart enough to rearrange their finances to get it done and were bold enough to take the risk with the 10-year deal. Good luck to them.
 
Sweet Jesus said:
He was here before but you just missed him.
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I'm pretty sure you can catch him - he might have had 40 possessions, but he's only gained ten metres down the road.
 
Sweet Jesus said:
Is his fat new contract weighing him down?
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From what I've been told by the media, the real issue with Rocky is that he isn't Patrick Dangerfield.

Of course from my own close observation of AFL teams over the course of the year, I've decided to go out on a limb and say that the real issue with a huge number of players is that they aren't Patrick Dangerfield.
 
Sweet Jesus said:
Draft and salary cap combined are as much equalisation as is desirable.

A new mechanism that automatically triggers extra draft picks would create more issues that it would solve.

That's unnecessary. You don't need to automatically trigger an extra pick for a team like Freo in 2016.

That's a recipe for frustration and cynicism.

If a team is really bad for several years, the AFL can hand out an extra pick at their discretion. That's fine. But I see no argument for these extra picks to be triggered automatically.

What's wrong with the discretion element?

That's preferable to them being triggered automatically, which creates a perception that tanking is incentivised.

On the other hand, Hawthorn lost a player like Franklin to FA. A prime example that kicks against what you're saying.

Besides, Hawthorn aside, the top teams have chopped and changed in recent years.

I mean, when you say 'the top teams', who are you talking about? Hawthorn, Sydney, Geelong, North, GWS, WC, Adelaide, Bulldogs – Freo and Port have made a GF and PF in recent times. It's not like there's just 2-3 teams with a monopoly and then daylight.

The Swans were smart enough to rearrange their finances to get it done and were bold enough to take the risk with the 10-year deal. Good luck to them.
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We'll just have to agree to disagree. If you can't provide any evidence that your claim equalisation still works exists, I think we're just talking past each other. Franklin leaving isn't evidence against - the fact his team went on to win two more premierships just shows how bad the system is right now. And when three teams have won 8 of the last 9 premierships and are all top 4 again, I think its pretty obvious who the top teams have been.
 
Ants said:
If you can't provide any evidence that your claim equalisation still works exists, I think we're just talking past each other.
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My claim is that it works adequately and that further mechanisms would create more issues than they would solve. That's not the kind of claim that can be 'proven' but we've seen what happened when extra picks were triggered automatically and I don't think many people would favour a return to that policy.

Your suggestion is that more draft picks should be automatically triggered to teams in the bottom four, regardless of how long they've been performing poorly. That's unnecessary and problematic for a range of reasons already outlined.

Some of the long-term strugglers have had a shitload of early draft picks. So we give them even more, hand over fist, and that's the silver bullet? That doesn't stack up. It's got to be about them getting their houses in order.

Ants said:
Franklin leaving isn't evidence against - the fact his team went on to win two more premierships just shows how bad the system is right now.
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No. But if you're going to characterise free agency as overwhelmingly stripping good players from the weak teams and sending them to the strong teams, Franklin is one of a few pretty emphatic counter-examples.

Hawthorn's success is not an indictment on 'the system'. It's a credit to Hawthorn. They've done it without many early draft picks in recent years and while losing some handy players along the way. It's not like they've been gifted some systemic advantage that needs to be corrected via extra equalisation.

Ants said:
And when three teams have won 8 of the last 9 premierships and are all top 4 again, I think its pretty obvious who the top teams have been.
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Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong.

So should every other team be getting extra picks to even it out?

Those three teams deserve their success. And plenty of other teams have been competitive in that time.

The onus is on other clubs to get better, not on the AFL to try and engineer a different outcome. I don't know why you think that would be desirable.
 
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Danger in Texas said:
1st and CEY for Rockliff. Or they can wait until FA, where they won't get as much.
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If Adelaide offer enough for him, which they would to get him from the club he would fall in high grade for the trade rank and give them a pick after their first. So they would get pick 2 along with 1 in the 2017 draft.
 
legendstatus said:
I still say and nothing will change my mind. The most overrated footballer in the last 10 years. Pure rubbish!
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That's great.

Still doesn't change the fact that
- he's the current Brisbane Lions captain
- he's a twice best and fairest at the Lions (2011 and 2014)
- he was All-Australian in 2014
- he finished 5th in the Brownlow with 21 votes in 2013

And he wants to stay at the Lions.

Enjoy.
 
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