2015 academy discussion thread (with some FS thrown in for good measure)

[jono2707]

There is no way the club should even think about accepting that first draft of this so called new 'system'. It reeks and the northern clubs should fight this one tooth and nail.

[Steve]

I accept that there will be changes to the existing system, but that proposal not only dramatically complicates the draft, but also the trade period, most likely free agency also, and creates a great incentive for the northern clubs to become secretive about their academy prospects and potentially play games with which draft they nominate for etc.

They use the Heeney example to make it seem relatively plausible - but conveniently exclude Hiscox and Davis from the calculations. It will also make the draft a nightmare to follow when you have multiple clubs with academy and FS players nominated.

The trade period will be even more of a grind with clubs having legitimate reason to quibble over moving only a couple of picks further up in the draft, even in the second and third rounds - given that will have a tangible impact on points you will have to pay off for nominating academy or FS players.

Even more so if next years bottom teams try to blackmail us into other unfavourable trades by saying they won't bid their top picks for Mills, for example.

If/when you have multiple prospects in the one year, it seems unreasonable to have to wait until draft night before knowing which picks might be bidded - you'll possibly be left with only a few minutes to have to decide whether you take 1 player and have to pass on multiple others, pass on 1 top prospect to take multiple others, or try to take all of them but jeopardise your ability to take players in the next draft. After spending years and millions on each intake, that doesn't seem a fair outcome at the end.

It will also create great incentive to minimise the perceived value of your academy players - at a minimum there will be complaints about it from other clubs, even if it isn't happening. If the player wants to play for their academy club and that club wants them, why wouldn't players suddenly get injured before u/18 Championships, not be fit to partipate in the draft camp, play limited games in their final under-age year etc? Also play up their interest in other sports to put other clubs off drafting them etc etc.

We're smart enough with our recruiting that we'll probably be OK either way - take the best academy and FS players and just top up with free agents if need be, plus hope a few of the players we would otherwise have picked late in drafts are still there to be taken as rookies.

But it will be an extremely complicated way of doing things.

[Auntie.Gerald]

it is not to complex in my opinion

"If the proposed changes had been in place for the 2014 draft, the Sydney Swans would have had to give up picks No.18 and No.37, and its pick No.38 would have slide back to pick No.70 in order to secure highly-rated academy graduate Isaac Heeney"

that is a fairly obvious scenario to ponder and the allocation is fairly straight forward.............but how many times are we really going to have a Callum Mills and Dunkley follow up the year after a Issac Heeney ??

If any other team had a young Hodge, Selwood and Pendles land in their lap with first rights I would be screaming blue murder !!!! Murder !!!!

This would be a very rare event I feel, but nonetheless it is a true event now and it is an event that is unfair to all the other teams in the comp ie for the Swans to have first pick at 3 potential super stars of the game with out some sort of compensation.

It is equally unfair that we have funded the academy for so long and finally when there is some fruits to bear we smashed by the AFL and receive minimal gain for effort and $

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I suspect that the AFL has gone a little tougher then what will be put in place as a top 5 pick plus a pick 70 does not quite seem fair

If it does come into effect I would take Mills..............we already had a massive win with Heeney................I would back the development of some of our other young players to stay with us but let be honest we can carry less recruitment in numbers for a season to get a Mills........it is a rare event that is worth taking the mix of pain and pleasure

[Kelpie_X]

Or a new system where if say Melbourne want to bid pick 2 or 3 for Heeney, the Swans can say OK, take him for our pick 17 and we will take your pick 2 or 3???

This way we are compensated what another club thinks one of our players are worth and they get to keep the player they wanted.

A fair and open system which would encourage trading between clubs!

Not @@@@ing bad

[Flying South]

According to the Herald Sun this morning, if you applied the proposed new system to the Heeney trade we would have effectively sold picks 18, 37 and 38 for 2 (Melbourne's bid for Heeney), 70, 88 and 89. If Heeney is as good as they say, is that a fair deal?

If you apply the same to this years draft, there is no way we could get both Mills and Dunkley. With my Swans hat on I think that is unjust. But as AG alluded to, if you take your Swan's hat off for second, I would be furious if Collingwood got all 3 of those player's for potentially picks 18, 18, 36.

So if we want both, I think Ludwig and/or Matt commented earlier that we may have to trade Some players for a couple of 1st round picks. But we would need to put some serious talent on the table for that to happen. Perhaps Hannebery and Jetta (EXAMPLES ONLY). And there is no way I would trade out that sort of talent to get Dunkley. So maybe Mills is all we will get. And perhaps that's why Dunkley is not publicly committing himself to the Swan's as he knows it is unlikely to happen.

[Flying South]

Or if we think that highly of Dunkley we could go into debt for him and use the following years draft picks for him. This is where our draft department really need their crystal balls.

[churry]

This sounds so complex that i get the impression future draft picks will potentially end up on the trade tables.

[dimelb]

it is not to complex in my opinion

"If the proposed changes had been in place for the 2014 draft, the Sydney Swans would have had to give up picks No.18 and No.37, and its pick No.38 would have slide back to pick No.70 in order to secure highly-rated academy graduate Isaac Heeney"

that is a fairly obvious scenario to ponder and the allocation is fairly straight forward.............but how many times are we really going to have a Callum Mills and Dunkley follow up the year after a Issac Heeney ??

If any other team had a young Hodge, Selwood and Pendles land in their lap with first rights I would be screaming blue murder !!!! Murder !!!!

This would be a very rare event I feel, but nonetheless it is a true event now and it is an event that is unfair to all the other teams in the comp ie for the Swans to have first pick at 3 potential super stars of the game with out some sort of compensation.

It is equally unfair that we have funded the academy for so long and finally when there is some fruits to bear we smashed by the AFL and receive minimal gain for effort and $

-----------------

I suspect that the AFL has gone a little tougher then what will be put in place as a top 5 pick plus a pick 70 does not quite seem fair

If it does come into effect I would take Mills..............we already had a massive win with Heeney................I would back the development of some of our other young players to stay with us but let be honest we can carry less recruitment in numbers for a season to get a Mills........it is a rare event that is worth taking the mix of pain and pleasure

AG, I think you have put your finger on the glaring weakness of the proposal, namely, that the draft is an uneven spread of talent in any given year, with the result that the points allocated for any positions are quite arbitrary and will not reflect a player's true worth.

It is much too early to be tinkering with the existing system and it has only happened because of the fluke that the Swans had access to an outstanding talent in 2014. This is highly unlikely to happen with any frequency. There is too much at stake here for the teams in NSW and Queensland to be interfering at this stage and the AFL needs to take a longer view on the matter, not rush in with some half-baked response to an unusual occurrence.

[mcs]

AG, I think you have put your finger on the glaring weakness of the proposal, namely, that the draft is an uneven spread of talent in any given year, with the result that the points allocated for any positions are quite arbitrary and will not reflect a player's true worth.

It is much too early to be tinkering with the existing system and it has only happened because of the fluke that the Swans had access to an outstanding talent in 2014. This is highly unlikely to happen with any frequency. There is too much at stake here for the teams in NSW and Queensland to be interfering at this stage and the AFL needs to take a longer view on the matter, not rush in with some half-baked response to an unusual occurrence.

Spot on Di and AG - this system is based on a ridiculous assumption that percieved talent = actual talent when it comes to the AFL level. This is a half-baked pile of poo this new system - that will punish us ridiculously, just because we are the 'trial team' due to a few good players coming through our academy.

if this system continues, I would hope the club give a mighty finger to the AFL and play as many games as they want to hide the talent at the Academy so we get it cheap. Looks pretty clearly designed to punish clubs who are putting the $$$ into developing talent, in particular talent that would never probably be in AFL to start with if it hadn't been for setups such as the academy setup.

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I accept that there will be changes to the existing system, but that proposal not only dramatically complicates the draft, but also the trade period, most likely free agency also, and creates a great incentive for the northern clubs to become secretive about their academy prospects and potentially play games with which draft they nominate for etc.

They use the Heeney example to make it seem relatively plausible - but conveniently exclude Hiscox and Davis from the calculations. It will also make the draft a nightmare to follow when you have multiple clubs with academy and FS players nominated.

The trade period will be even more of a grind with clubs having legitimate reason to quibble over moving only a couple of picks further up in the draft, even in the second and third rounds - given that will have a tangible impact on points you will have to pay off for nominating academy or FS players.

Even more so if next years bottom teams try to blackmail us into other unfavourable trades by saying they won't bid their top picks for Mills, for example.

If/when you have multiple prospects in the one year, it seems unreasonable to have to wait until draft night before knowing which picks might be bidded - you'll possibly be left with only a few minutes to have to decide whether you take 1 player and have to pass on multiple others, pass on 1 top prospect to take multiple others, or try to take all of them but jeopardise your ability to take players in the next draft. After spending years and millions on each intake, that doesn't seem a fair outcome at the end.

It will also create great incentive to minimise the perceived value of your academy players - at a minimum there will be complaints about it from other clubs, even if it isn't happening. If the player wants to play for their academy club and that club wants them, why wouldn't players suddenly get injured before u/18 Championships, not be fit to partipate in the draft camp, play limited games in their final under-age year etc? Also play up their interest in other sports to put other clubs off drafting them etc etc.

We're smart enough with our recruiting that we'll probably be OK either way - take the best academy and FS players and just top up with free agents if need be, plus hope a few of the players we would otherwise have picked late in drafts are still there to be taken as rookies.

But it will be an extremely complicated way of doing things.

Spot on Steve - that is the cosequences I see as well. Im sure part of the AFL's thinking is this perverse idea of 'footy every day' - which means they need to create stories for the off season. Hence the introducing of a system that will create significant gamesmanship moves from clubs - thus making draft night more of an 'unknown' and theoretically more exciting.

[Matt80]

According to the Herald Sun this morning, if you applied the proposed new system to the Heeney trade we would have effectively sold picks 18, 37 and 38 for 2 (Melbourne's bid for Heeney), 70, 88 and 89. If Heeney is as good as they say, is that a fair deal?

If you apply the same to this years draft, there is no way we could get both Mills and Dunkley. With my Swans hat on I think that is unjust. But as AG alluded to, if you take your Swan's hat off for second, I would be furious if Collingwood got all 3 of those player's for potentially picks 18, 18, 36.

So if we want both, I think Ludwig and/or Matt commented earlier that we may have to trade Some players for a couple of 1st round picks. But we would need to put some serious talent on the table for that to happen. Perhaps Hannebery and Jetta (EXAMPLES ONLY). And there is no way I would trade out that sort of talent to get Dunkley. So maybe Mills is all we will get. And perhaps that's why Dunkley is not publicly committing himself to the Swan's as he knows it is unlikely to happen.

I was calling for some more trade business to be done at the end of 2014. Maybe the Swans predicted this system was coming in and will now trade accordingly at the end of 2015.

You should be looking to trade out mid-older age players if there are understudies ready to make an impact. Craig Bird is a obvious trade candidate. He has Mitchell, Heeney and perhaps Hewitt queuing up to take his midfield time. A 2nd round for Bird (salary cap relief as well) would give us some points to throw at Mills and Dunkley.

Nick Smith has a back pocket successor in Jones. If a good late 1st round deal was offered for Smith, I would take it.

I think if you can take highly rated youngsters at 25% discount (Mills) and Dunkley 15% discount, then you go for it.

[i'm-uninformed2]

Eddie is still a fat lump of dog doo doo

[mcs]

According to the Herald Sun this morning, if you applied the proposed new system to the Heeney trade we would have effectively sold picks 18, 37 and 38 for 2 (Melbourne's bid for Heeney), 70, 88 and 89. If Heeney is as good as they say, is that a fair deal?

If you apply the same to this years draft, there is no way we could get both Mills and Dunkley. With my Swans hat on I think that is unjust. But as AG alluded to, if you take your Swan's hat off for second, I would be furious if Collingwood got all 3 of those player's for potentially picks 18, 18, 36.

So if we want both, I think Ludwig and/or Matt commented earlier that we may have to trade Some players for a couple of 1st round picks. But we would need to put some serious talent on the table for that to happen. Perhaps Hannebery and Jetta (EXAMPLES ONLY). And there is no way I would trade out that sort of talent to get Dunkley. So maybe Mills is all we will get. And perhaps that's why Dunkley is not publicly committing himself to the Swan's as he knows it is unlikely to happen.

I don't care how good Heeney might be - paying that much for someone who, despite huge talent, is completely unproven at AFL level is ridiculous. Basically selling out a whole draft worth of picks (ignoring the possibility of bargains late in the draft) does not constitute a reasonable price - however good that player is. Imagine if it was a Melbourne based club in such a situation - they would cry foul, especially if it was the Colliwobbles or the Wees and Poos.

Your point is valid about taking the Swans hat off - but how often are we going to get three players like Heeney, Mills and Dunkley come through within 2 years? Its not going to happen very often at all. Dunkley will be probably taken as a F/S selection - something most clubs have had plenty of over the years, and the Swans comparatively have had very few come through (exceptionally few that have actually been any good). Heeney is only playing football because of our academy - a true 'home grown' player if there ever was one, and Mills has also been developed through that process. No matter what their quality ends up being, I don't think what we have to give up really will represent a 'fair value' for a young, unproven player. Because you know the clubs will game the system whenever a very good player comes up under FS/Academy - meaning clubs will always be forced to pay over the top, no matter the actual value of the player in the end.

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I was calling for some more trade business to be done at the end of 2014. Maybe the Swans predicted this system was coming in and will now trade accordingly at the end of 2015.

You should be looking to trade out mid-older age players if there are understudies ready to make an impact. Craig Bird is a obvious trade candidate. He has Mitchell, Heeney and perhaps Hewitt queuing up to take his midfield time. A 2nd round for Bird (salary cap relief as well) would give us some points to throw at Mills and Dunkley.

Nick Smith has a back pocket successor in Jones. If a good late 1st round deal was offered for Smith, I would take it.

I think if you can take highly rated youngsters at 25% discount (Mills) and Dunkley 15% discount, then you go for it.

On your logic, lets just sell all our first team players and replace them with highly rated youngsters. All highly rated youngsters must clearly make it - given your willingness to trade out players here there and everywhere to take them. Why on earth would we trade out Smith - one of the very best in his position in the league and at the prime part of his career?

[0918330512]

Short sighted by the Vic clubs. In the past Geelong & Fatty Maguire have benefited from F/S picks by getting a bunch at once. Geelong kept their core playing group together, from a dominant period, ergo there is a chance that an unusually large number of players who will qualify for F/S could potentially have kids in the same recruiting period in 15 years. Stinking Collingwood seem to have the ability to retain quality players too. I can only hope if we are robbed of the ability to recruit Mills & Dunks Jr., that the other clubs will suffer at some stage too. Problem is, the F/S picks don't often bunch up, while Academy players might. I think they should be treated separately for this reason.
Leave F/S alone as realistically you might only get an eligible player every 3 or 4 years. Even then, they might be like the dud Clokes, not the Travis version. It allows clubs to maintain "tradition" of family representation and keeping some brothers together. In fact, they should (IMO) have a Brother Rule, where if a brother is at a club, you can nominate a sibling who is draft eligible in the same way they do for F/S so there is a chance they can play together. How would it have been if the Krakouers, Danihers, Morwoods, Cordiners etc never had the chance to play together?
Academy, let us have an relatively "unencumbered" pick at our first desired player (ie under the current rules) as a reward for all the effort we put into many academy kids, and if we happen to have multiple ones we want, apply the new system to the rest that we want. Otherwise, where is the incentive to run the academy?

[Matt80]

I don't care how good Heeney might be - paying that much for someone who, despite huge talent, is completely unproven at AFL level is ridiculous. Basically selling out a whole draft worth of picks (ignoring the possibility of bargains late in the draft) does not constitute a reasonable price - however good that player is. Imagine if it was a Melbourne based club in such a situation - they would cry foul, especially if it was the Colliwobbles or the Wees and Poos.

Your point is valid about taking the Swans hat off - but how often are we going to get three players like Heeney, Mills and Dunkley come through within 2 years? Its not going to happen very often at all. Dunkley will be probably taken as a F/S selection - something most clubs have had plenty of over the years, and the Swans comparatively have had very few come through (exceptionally few that have actually been any good). Heeney is only playing football because of our academy - a true 'home grown' player if there ever was one, and Mills has also been developed through that process. No matter what their quality ends up being, I don't think what we have to give up really will represent a 'fair value' for a young, unproven player. Because you know the clubs will game the system whenever a very good player comes up under FS/Academy - meaning clubs will always be forced to pay over the top, no matter the actual value of the player in the end.

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On your logic, lets just sell all our first team players and replace them with highly rated youngsters. All highly rated youngsters must clearly make it - given your willingness to trade out players here there and everywhere to take them. Why on earth would we trade out Smith - one of the very best in his position in the league and at the prime part of his career?

You trade out players who offer good trade value and can be replaced. How much longer is Smith going to be in the prime of his career? Zac Jones looks like he had all the abilities to be an effective replacement for Smith. If Smith and the Swans get a good offer to return to Victoria, why not take it?

Craig Bird is taking midfield time that could be given to Mitchell, Heeney Hewitt, and Mills / Dunkley next year. Is Bird going to be better than the above guys? Is Bird going to get better than he is now? If a good 2nd round draft pick was offered, why not take it? Bird had a lot of value to ad to other teams in the AFL. There are too many guys who play a similar position to Bird at the Swans.

We need to secure the services of these two exiting midfield prospects to build the Heeney, Hewitt, Dunkley and Mills future powerhouse midfield. We will need to trade smartly to do that.

This is just my opinion.

[ugg]

I actually don't think it's a bad system overall, I would like to see the reasoning behind the points allocation and why it ramps up so steeply towards the top end. It's this increased gradient that causes us problems with Mills and Dunkley coming in the same year and the great likelihood our first pick in the draft will be towards the back end of the draft.

The examples provided in the PDF document only have 1 instance where a deficit is applied (Zaine Cordy) towards picks in the next year, but it's a small deficit that has no effect based on the assumption the Bulldogs have pick 5 next year. I'm not sure how big a deficit would be allowed, but assuming that Mills is a similar case to Heeney (top 3 bid and we have pick ~18) and Dunkley declares for us and we decide to take him, we could effectively be using all our top 3 picks in 2015 and most of our top 3 picks in 2016 on these 2 players alone.