What would you do to fix Trade Week?

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first trade done gets both clubs exra money in soft cap. second trade done ditto, but slightly less, encourage them to happen faster

I’ll trade you pick 88 for pick 86. Submitted at 0.002 second mark of trade week.
 
I hate it, even though I know a trade generally means little in the overall scheme of things, I waste too much time reading and listening to things I know is pointless.
Drives me insane.

I wish I could somehow ignore everything and just look at the trades at the end. Do I really give a stuff that Baker went to West Coast or Atkins went to Port? No but I’ve read WAYYYY too much about it.
Maybe I’ll book more holidays to Europe in October or something.
 

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Allow clubs to trade players without their consent. You can't trade players who have been in the afl 2 years or less without their consent and players who sign as unrestricted free agents need consent. All other players should be open slather.

Players have too much say now, by picking clubs when they aren't a free agent. It means houston, barass (if done) smith have gone for well unders, whilst rioli, Bolton, noble, baker are well overs. How can a North rebuild, they had a far better hand to get houston, yet can't compete in trading as its not houstons preferred destination. Either houston bucks it up if he wants to come home or plays at the power.

Also player agents have far too greater say in things
 
I hate it, even though I know a trade generally means little in the overall scheme of things, I waste too much time reading and listening to things I know is pointless.
Drives me insane.

I wish I could somehow ignore everything and just look at the trades at the end. Do I really give a stuff that Baker went to West Coast or Atkins went to Port? No but I’ve read WAYYYY too much about it.
Maybe I’ll book more holidays to Europe in October or something.
I don't pay any attention until the end, it's the way to go. Trade radio sounds horrendous.
 
I'd like to see a literal ruck roundabout. Every team that needs a new ruck puts one in a slot on a large roulette type wheel, then the list managers are randomly placed around the outside. A good spin and then WHOOSH, a Tom Hickey or Ivan Soldo comes flying out towards their new manager with a prefilled 1 year contract.
 
I'd like to see a literal ruck roundabout. Every team that needs a new ruck puts one in a slot on a large roulette type wheel, then the list managers are randomly placed around the outside. A good spin and then WHOOSH, a Tom Hickey or Ivan Soldo comes flying out towards their new manager with a prefilled 1 year contract.

Gimme some of that Dan Currie action
 

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You can't fix trade week without fixing underlying issues.

The AFL ****ed up free agency, draft bidding and future pick trading to go with a salary cap that is about as effective as a UN resolution and seemingly no rules around player contracts. It's a joke that the rules allow for players like Mac Andrew to sign long term, massive money deals.

RFA is a joke. The whole premise of restricted free agency is club power. All RFA does is allow players to dictate contract terms. Jeremy Cameron wasn't restricted, he was just out of contract. GWS had the choice to let him go and get a compo pick, trade him or let him go in the draft. Players don't sign RFA contracts with any intention of playing for their original club and they aren't expected to. The only difference between him and say Liam Baker is one year of service, so Richmond had no option to try and get band 1 or 2 compo but letting us sign him. I doubt we will ever see an RFA sign with a new team then go back to his old team.

Restricted free agents should be tied to their clubs. St Kilda offer Josh Battle $500k x 4 years. Hawthorn offer him $800k x 5 years (for example). He signs with Hawthorn. St Kilda can keep him on the Hawthorn contract terms or let him go and get compo based on their original offer. Or compo is removed altogether. Players are drafted at 18/19. RFA should kick in after 5-6 years then UFA after 10.

Pick trading should be easy to fix. Allow clubs to trade swaps and protections. E.g. Hawthorn can trade F1 Carlton OR F1 Hawthorn to WC, whichever is higher/lower. Those clubs can trade the right to swap F2 or F3 or whatever picks. WC can offer our F1 pick to someone on draft night. But we can't offer it with a top 3 or top 5 protection. We stink, so our F1 pick unprotected is more valuable than our F1 pick with top 5 protection. We trade it top 5 protected, finish 18th then our 2026 pick takes its place the year after. We trade it unprotected and finish 18th someone gets pick 1.

Draft bidding has been done to death. Picks 1 and 30 last year for us. Go back to the last time we were shit before expansion drafts and we had 2, 18 (priority), 20, 36. Take out two priority picks and Melbourne's (spooner) third pick was 33. Our second pick was 30 last year. Joke. Regardless of the number of bids, compo picks etc. the fact that the system encourages teams with preferential access to top players to trade out of where those players are "selected" is a farce.

The AFL doesn't dictate contract lengths, doesn't dictate max salaries after initial draftee contract, doesn't publish salaries and doesn't require any kind of salary matching with trades but still requires clubs to pay 90% of the cap. Joke.

The AFL should also allow trades to occur any time including during the draft. We have pick 12 and apparently want Bo Allan because he is from WA and we are simpletons. If a club picks him at 11 we can pick someone else or trade for other picks etc. but there is no mechanism to trade for a drafted player, and no mechanism to trade say Shai Bolton for the players Freo rather than the picks weeks ahead of the draft.
 
You can't fix trade week without fixing underlying issues.

The AFL ****ed up free agency, draft bidding and future pick trading to go with a salary cap that is about as effective as a UN resolution and seemingly no rules around player contracts. It's a joke that the rules allow for players like Mac Andrew to sign long term, massive money deals.

RFA is a joke. The whole premise of restricted free agency is club power. All RFA does is allow players to dictate contract terms. Jeremy Cameron wasn't restricted, he was just out of contract. GWS had the choice to let him go and get a compo pick, trade him or let him go in the draft. Players don't sign RFA contracts with any intention of playing for their original club and they aren't expected to. The only difference between him and say Liam Baker is one year of service, so Richmond had no option to try and get band 1 or 2 compo but letting us sign him. I doubt we will ever see an RFA sign with a new team then go back to his old team.

Restricted free agents should be tied to their clubs. St Kilda offer Josh Battle $500k x 4 years. Hawthorn offer him $800k x 5 years (for example). He signs with Hawthorn. St Kilda can keep him on the Hawthorn contract terms or let him go and get compo based on their original offer. Or compo is removed altogether. Players are drafted at 18/19. RFA should kick in after 5-6 years then UFA after 10.

Pick trading should be easy to fix. Allow clubs to trade swaps and protections. E.g. Hawthorn can trade F1 Carlton OR F1 Hawthorn to WC, whichever is higher/lower. Those clubs can trade the right to swap F2 or F3 or whatever picks. WC can offer our F1 pick to someone on draft night. But we can't offer it with a top 3 or top 5 protection. We stink, so our F1 pick unprotected is more valuable than our F1 pick with top 5 protection. We trade it top 5 protected, finish 18th then our 2026 pick takes its place the year after. We trade it unprotected and finish 18th someone gets pick 1.

Draft bidding has been done to death. Picks 1 and 30 last year for us. Go back to the last time we were shit before expansion drafts and we had 2, 18 (priority), 20, 36. Take out two priority picks and Melbourne's (spooner) third pick was 33. Our second pick was 30 last year. Joke. Regardless of the number of bids, compo picks etc. the fact that the system encourages teams with preferential access to top players to trade out of where those players are "selected" is a farce.

The AFL doesn't dictate contract lengths, doesn't dictate max salaries after initial draftee contract, doesn't publish salaries and doesn't require any kind of salary matching with trades but still requires clubs to pay 90% of the cap. Joke.

The AFL should also allow trades to occur any time including during the draft. We have pick 12 and apparently want Bo Allan because he is from WA and we are simpletons. If a club picks him at 11 we can pick someone else or trade for other picks etc. but there is no mechanism to trade for a drafted player, and no mechanism to trade say Shai Bolton for the players Freo rather than the picks weeks ahead of the draft.
Agree completely and clubs should be able to trade players too. Player managers have far too much say in where a player lands
 
Agree completely and clubs should be able to trade players too. Player managers have far too much say in where a player lands

Player contracts need to be tradeable. I have nothing but respect for Tom Barrass and I'm glad he got his trade wish but if he (or anyone else) wants more money 2 years into a 5 year contract then too bad so sad. There is no mechanism for clubs to say "you know what, you aren't worth $1m a year any more, we'll just pay you half that" or "North have cap space for next year, we'll send you there and they can pay you $m and we'll give them pick 20 for it".

Ridiculous that we have free agency, players out of contract and under contract demanding to go to clubs, players signing contracts 9 years long and player salaries not being restricted or published, and clubs have... what exactly? I mean we can force Harley Reid to play for us for 3 years, after that if he wants out we better hope he wants to go somewhere that has good picks to trade. Angus Brayshaw had to retire with 5 years left on his contract. Melbourne are on the hook for that and some of it still counts against the salary cap.
 
“And… I cannot stress this enough, players lives are literally on the line here”

In a very extreme reach I almost get what he’s trying to say but what is the absolute WORST case scenario for ANY of them?

The ones who don’t get traded after requesting it stay another year where they have already been and while it might be uncomfortable they still get paid and their life doesn’t change much.

The ones who in an unlikely scenario get traded where maybe they don’t want to still get paid to play football in an environment where a club willingly took them on and they are entitled to request a trade themselves


that’s it. That’s basically the extent of it.
 
Scrap the off season trade period currently in place and allow trades any time until a trade deadline 4 weeks out from the finals.
Allow the trading of players without their approval.
All players drafted remain the property of the club that drafts them for 6 years, contracted or not. During this time the club has full control of the player to keep, delist or trade them.
After 6 years all players become free agents unless under contract.
 
Open it the Friday after the Grand Final, close it 3 days after the draft. Only reason why it so short is for media clicks. Make it longer you will still get the mad rush at the end but for most of the 2 months it will be just background news.
 
Since FA and trades are basically the same thing now, just roll it into the same week and work to acquire the points needed because:

The AFL seem hellbent on using the points system. We have 3 year draftee contracts now, lets see more ability for clubs to keep a player listed.
💫Reduce FA service from 8 years to 6 years.​
💫Remove the made up compensation picks🥴
💫Remove any discounts.​
💫Reduce the draft hands accordingly of the club having the player coming in.​
Example: Jack Graham moves from Richmond to West Coast. Richmond receives the pick spat out by the AFL formula- an end of round 2 pick #42 (worth 502 pts). West Coast's R2 pick #26 (worth 729 pts) is then reduced by that much and becomes #54.
This will stop the overpaying of contracts for draft manipulation as it will cost you picks for what you are paying up for. If you have no current picks then future ones are gobbled up like how current bid matching works.

Essentially this will function as 90% of what trades do now, except it is a sure thing for ease of movement though that is mostly a given thing anyway these days. The clubs have an increased window to convince a player to stay, and this will reduce the haggling and unbalanced trades we see essentially forcing the market rate to be the true cost.
 

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What would you do to fix Trade Week?

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