Player Watch Tom Doedee - Departed for Brisbane, End of 1st Round FA Compensation

[Golumless]

I don’t quite get all the hoo-hah about Doedee’s free agency compensation. Every year there are questionable decisions about compensation…

I’m still not sure why there even is compensation for free agency. Do away with restricted free agency all together and have a system whereby players are free to move at the end of their contracts at the end of so many years of service. Make it simple.

To avoid stronger clubs consistently poaching talent from the weaker clubs, you could easily implement a tax on the Salary or Soft cap for higher placed teams signing players from lower ranked teams.

So Brisbane want to sign Doedee from the Crows? They can but it reduces their overall Soft Cap spend by a few %. The Crows get nothing sure, but Brisbane are weakened slightly in another way… the bigger the differential, the bigger the tax. Collingwood want to sign a free agent from West Coast? They can, but it will cost them in a pretty major way… thinking in the fly, perhaps 0.5% Soft Cap Tax for every position differential…

I don’t know - but the current system in place is crapola. It compromises the draft in a major way and very rarely compensates a club according to the level of the player lost.

I assume that kind of system would run afoul of at least one labor law.

That said, I think compensation is a fair attempt at making a system that should have never been implemented - and we are stuck with - viable. After all, anything that doesn't give draft picks/on field compensation disproportionately hurts non-Victorian clubs, considering an absurd amount of draftees are Victorian and that there isn't a reliable mechanism to bring in ready-made talent outside of Victoria. Especially problematic as we've seen in the last 15 years that group of clubs fall off the map when it comes to flags.

Another major problen is the one way to make this system work is to allow non-consent trading, however the AFL has missed that boat by now having a players union. It's their job to make sure that never happens.

It could be refined to a similar system to baseball where it's just end of round picks. You compromise the 2nd round onwards, but by that point of the draft - who cares. It also removes a level of subjectivity that is currently present.