AFL (non-Swans) off-season moves - 2022 edition

[i'm-uninformed2]

Isnt it great that the AFL are letting Grundy take a pay cut 2 years into a 7 year contract so he can get to Melbourne.

Funnily enough I don't think we could have done that with Buddy even if he retired his money would still be on our books while the contract was 'active'

As Orwell said, 'All animals are equal, some are MORE equal than others'.

It’s crap. With Bud, we were obliged to honour and pay out the deal no matter what, board members were personally liable, COLA was cut, trade ban in applied. It is so transparently, blatantly full of double standards.

[KTigers]

Part of the "go home" culture in the AFL stems from the fact that there is very little travel involved in being an AFL player,
especially if you are at a Melbourne club. Even if you play for the Swans and play all the away games you may spend 20
nights max in a hotel. If you play for a MLB team you'll spend about three months total in a hotel. 60% of players come
through the ranks and they've barely ever left Victoria. So when they do go interstate for two years initially after being
drafted it is a really big deal and change for them. Their focus is in Victoria, most of their player mates get to play in Victoria.
It's been like this since the draft came in.
If you are coming up thru the pro sports ranks in the US or Europe you know from day one there is very little chance
you will end up at team anywhere near where your parents and mates are. It barely enters the equation.
Also, the entire vibe around the AFL is that it's a Melbourne game, and it sort of is. The league administration is based
there, most of the teams are there, the media is there, all the Grand Finals are played there etc etc. It is one way traffic
all the way. No one in New York or Los Angeles thinks their city is the home of baseball or gridiron or basketball. No one
in Barcelona or Munich thinks their city is the home of soccer.

[KTigers]

Paying $600k a season to have Treloar play at the Dogs and Grundy to play at the Dees!
I must say some of the moves at the Pies are difficult to understand but they did make a Prelim?

Illustrating once again that football clubs are not real businesses. Imagine owning a business and paying a big
chunk of the salary of an ex-employee now working for a competitor. It's just brilliant.

[Foreign Legion]

It’s crap. With Bud, we were obliged to honour and pay out the deal no matter what, board members were personally liable, COLA was cut, trade ban in applied. It is so transparently, blatantly full of double standards.

We can blame the thankfully departed Rhodes Scholar for that. People in high positions like that should be above hatred/bias etc but he never got over it.

Yes, I forgot the trade ban and a player we drafted missing 12 weeks due to off field suspension. Total vindictiveness. But anything to help The Pies and Dees.

[Blood Fever]

Part of the "go home" culture in the AFL stems from the fact that there is very little travel involved in being an AFL player,
especially if you are at a Melbourne club. Even if you play for the Swans and play all the away games you may spend 20
nights max in a hotel. If you play for a MLB team you'll spend about three months total in a hotel. 60% of players come
through the ranks and they've barely ever left Victoria. So when they do go interstate for two years initially after being
drafted it is a really big deal and change for them. Their focus is in Victoria, most of their player mates get to play in Victoria.
It's been like this since the draft came in.
If you are coming up thru the pro sports ranks in the US or Europe you know from day one there is very little chance
you will end up at team anywhere near where your parents and mates are. It barely enters the equation.
Also, the entire vibe around the AFL is that it's a Melbourne game, and it sort of is. The league administration is based
there, most of the teams are there, the media is there, all the Grand Finals are played there etc etc. It is one way traffic
all the way. No one in New York or Los Angeles thinks their city is the home of baseball or gridiron or basketball. No one
in Barcelona or Munich thinks their city is the home of soccer.

Great post. The VAFL.

[707]

It’s crap. With Bud, we were obliged to honour and pay out the deal no matter what, board members were personally liable, COLA was cut, trade ban in applied. It is so transparently, blatantly full of double standards.

Double standards, that's what the corrupt AFL excels at!

I'm loving this Hawthorn crisis because just for once the AFL can't sweep it under a rug and the way it's played out is that one side or the other is lying and the AFL can't come out of this looking good, loving it haha

[707]

Having another look at the picks they hold, still can't see how Freo and Brisbane can get their deals done fully.

[Bloods05]

We can blame the thankfully departed Rhodes Scholar for that. People in high positions like that should be above hatred/bias etc but he never got over it.

Yes, I forgot the trade ban and a player we drafted missing 12 weeks due to off field suspension. Total vindictiveness. But anything to help The Pies and Dees.

It's not just that people in high positions should be above that kind of behaviour. There should also be institutional restraints that stop them doing this kind of harm if they prove incapable of restraining themselves. In the AFL's case, no such restraints were in place. They gave free rein to Fitzpatrick's hatred, bias, and vindictiveness. It was, and remains, a disgrace.

[troyjones2525]

So Geelong dominates us to win a flag and now adds more young talent plus collecting pick 7 in the upcoming draft... seems fair... gotta admire their recruitment team.

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[Jimitron5000]

So Geelong dominates us to win a flag and now adds more young talent plus collecting pick 7 in the upcoming draft... seems fair... gotta admire their recruitment team.

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

In a similar way vacancies become available at retirement villages, there is a natural attrition of Geelong's list given its age profile.
That said, you do have to admire the way they go about it. They seem to be able to find players who play for the love of the game and are not interested in the least in being financially rewarded for their efforts.

[BRS328]

Brs

It’s crap. With Bud, we were obliged to honour and pay out the deal no matter what, board members were personally liable, COLA was cut, trade ban in applied. It is so transparently, blatantly full of double standards.

It gets worse. Geelong has just had Bowes from the Gold Coast do a tour of their facilities in a bid to entice him to the Cats, that just happens to also include pick 7 in the national draft provided they take the next 2 years of his contract of $1.7 million.
Geelong have now asked the other AFL if they can renegotiate the Bowes contract and spread it out over a longer period. Bowes in his own right was pick 10 in the national draft, so while it was clearly a back ended deal, and if allowed is as blatant as it gets in terms of double standards.

[stevoswan]

In a similar way vacancies become available at retirement villages, there is a natural attrition of Geelong's list given its age profile.
That said, you do have to admire the way they go about it. They seem to be able to find players who play for the love of the game and are not interested in the least in being financially rewarded for their efforts.

You were joking weren't you?

[liz]

It gets worse. Geelong has just had Bowes from the Gold Coast do a tour of their facilities in a bid to entice him to the Cats, that just happens to also include pick 7 in the national draft provided they take the next 2 years of his contract of $1.7 million.
Geelong have now asked the other AFL if they can renegotiate the Bowes contract and spread it out over a longer period. Bowes in his own right was pick 10 in the national draft, so while it was clearly a back ended deal, and if allowed is as blatant as it gets in terms of double standards.

Comparing the Franklin and Bowes situations is apples and oranges. If a competition is going to have a RFA system, you have to prevent clubs outbidding a player's existing club and then renegotiating downwards. As far as I am aware, the obligation on a club to honour the free agency contract applies to all players. It was certainly imposed on Hawthorn when Ty Vickery retired with a year still to go on his contract.

The "Buddy Rule" was actually more draconian than just holding the club to bearing the full whack of his salary in the cap, and I think was (unfairly) unique to this contract. The AFL also stipulated that the Swans couldn't move the money around between years, but rather had to stick with the year-by-year schedule of payments that they set out when the contract was struck. So if they'd found themselves with unexpected space in the cap in, say, year five or six of the contract, they weren't permitted to bring payments to Franklin forward to reduce the risk they'd still be paying him large amounts in years eight and nine when he'd retired.

It's all a moot point now since he has seen out his contract and beyond. But it was another instance of making up rules on the run, possibly vindictively.

The current situation with Bowes is the result of a few elements of competition mismanagement colliding. One is that the salary cap clearly isn't working as it should to equalise access to talent across the competition. That's already been discussed.

The second is that the AFL arguably mismanaged the rescue package that they gave the Suns a few years ago. The Suns are currently in a situation where they have to reduce their list size, and have received so many high draft picks over the years that they are like confetti to them. Most clubs would value a pick 7 really highly and wouldn't toss it in the garbage can. But it has little value to the Suns, particularly as they are likely to get another pick around that spot when Rankine departs to Adelaide. If this were merely a salary cap dump (concerning enough on its own for a club that has never made finals), they'd be offering Bowes (and contract) for a 4th round pick.

The third element is that the AFL has become increasingly blase about clubs buying and selling cap space. With a draft/cap system that is already clearly not achieving its goal of equalisation, this further undermines equalisation.

[Blood Fever]

It's not just that people in high positions should be above that kind of behaviour. There should also be institutional restraints that stop them doing this kind of harm if they prove incapable of restraining themselves. In the AFL's case, no such restraints were in place. They gave free rein to Fitzpatrick's hatred, bias, and vindictiveness. It was, and remains, a disgrace.

+1

[i'm-uninformed2]

Comparing the Franklin and Bowes situations is apples and oranges. If a competition is going to have a RFA system, you have to prevent clubs outbidding a player's existing club and then renegotiating downwards. As far as I am aware, the obligation on a club to honour the free agency contract applies to all players. It was certainly imposed on Hawthorn when Ty Vickery retired with a year still to go on his contract.

I get the distinction between Bud and Bowes.

But I don’t think - and appreciate you weren’t delving into that - there is any difference between Buddy’s deal and the one Grundy signed. It was effectively a FA contract, as it was signed the year before he was due and clearly designed to keep him from going home to South Australia, with Port in particular into him.

The idea he can now take a pay cut, which effectively makes it easier for the Pies to get him off the books and the share of his residual contract they have to pay, is farcical.