2025 List Management

[Velour&Ruffles]

and this is the problem we have when players are weighing up another Melbourne club or us - moving interstate and uprooting family comes a distant second to just driving to a different Melbourne suburb to train.

100% true. But at the same time the AFL - which professes to be dedicated to creating a level competition - is about to gut the benefit of the northern academies.

I don't understand why there is an assumption that the draft rules around father-son and (northern, not the pretend NG) academies need to be the same. One is the result of lucky sperm, the other is the result of significant financial investment, early talent identification and a decade or so of training and development. Only a true moron would view them as equivalent. And yet ....

[Thunder Shaker]

100% true. But at the same time the AFL - which professes to be dedicated to creating a level competition - is about to gut the benefit of the northern academies.

I don't understand why there is an assumption that the draft rules around father-son and (northern, not the pretend NG) academies need to be the same. One is the result of lucky sperm, the other is the result of significant financial investment, early talent identification and a decade or so of training and development. Only a true moron would view them as equivalent. And yet ....

If the AFL was really governing for all clubs, it would put free agency under scrutiny. Free agency compromises the draft just as much as the Academies do, yet the compensation picks given to the original club of the free agents come at no cost in draft capital to the destination club. These "free" draft picks are not free. The 16 clubs that are not involved in the deal lose value for all their draft picks after the compensation picks.

A select few clubs can load up on free agents while keeping all their draft picks. It's a huge source of inequity that must be addressed. It won't be, because the clubs that do this are a few strong Victorian clubs, and they are also the original club of several of the senior AFL administrators. All clubs are supposed to be equal due to equalisation policies, but some are more equal than others.

Another area that is need of addressing is the salary cap. Not all player payments are within the salary cap. Sponsorships are not included. This is why Geelong has a very large salary sombrero while other clubs don't get as much benefit.

Changes that are needed here:
* Include all player benefits in the salary cap, including sponsorship deals. No more free cars for the spouses of players, no more free real estate.
* Remove the salary cap minimum. It shouldn't be necessary for clubs to fiddle contracts with back-ending and front-ending to get them up to an arbitrary minimum.
* Allow clubs to trade salary cap space for draft picks, up to a maximum of perhaps 5% of cap space per year. This is more controversial, but it may have benefits. An example of a benefit: a club with a lot of salary cap space can use it to buy draft picks that they can use to recruit good players, thereby putting that cap to use in later seasons.
* Clubs buying salary cap space cannot go over 105% in one year and cannot go over 100% averaged over 5 years.
* Require clubs receiving players from free agency to spend draft capital to create the compensation picks with no discounts.