The draft and priority pick system is designed to equalize the competetion, so effectively, the first pick/s need to go to the team with the worst list. The current system based on ladder position and premiership points is not effective enough to ensure that the most deserving team gets the first pick/s. A team may have a good, deep list but get slaughtered by injuries or a team that is really poor might get a few lucky wins against injury riddled opponents and finish off the bottom. The Win/Loss ratio is not good enough for my liking to determine which team deserves the best draft picks.

I think the draft order for the first 8 (or more) picks should be determined by two things. Firstly, at the end of the home and away season each club has to rank the player list of bottom 8 sides. Perhaps it can be made the responsibility of the coach, football department or whoever, but these 16 rankings are then collated and used to derive a draft order for the first 8 picks.

A second, indepentdant panel is then responsible for going through this list (worst player list to best) and determine if the club deserves/requires extra "priority" picks. Each bottom 8 club can put submissions into this panel to argue their case and clarify all confirmed or possible retirements. The extra picks can be granted before the start of the first round of the draft (Pick 1), after the first 8 picks (Pick 9), or before the second round (Pick 17).

The only drawback I have thought of so far is that clubs might hide young players, but that is really to their own detriment. If clubs are keen and focused on development, they will continue to blood youngsters as per normal.

Edited August 7, 200915 yr by S_T

or, you could just do the entire order of the draft on the number of wins over 3 years.

I'd say that would be far too susceptible to corruption. There are just too many external factors.