csdee

As I said in my original post, free agency has nothing to do with equalisation and confounding the two is a mistake. There is no question that successful teams of the day tend to be the major beneficiaries of free agency. That doesn’t make it wrong. That just provides a clear incentive to not be mismanaged. Who said anything about academies and f/s being taken away from anybody. The northern team tend to get more from academies than do the southern teams but historically have got very little from f/s (Brisbane are a current exception as they are getting some benefit from their period of dominance in the 2000s.) as I said in my original post, I am open to tweaking the pricing of academy players but I think that the academies are working exactly the way that they are meant to. The fact that the AFl lost its mind for a year, costing us Mac Andrew, is grounds to criticise the AFL (a lot) but not grounds for complaint against the academies in general. As for the White twins, I think it’s time to have a vex and a quite lie down rather than jumping at shadows. We are much more likely to miss out on them if the AFL reacts to people screaming for change than otherwise. The only common feature of people screaming for change is “it’s them benefiting at the moment and not us.” This is largely envy but the reason that the Eddie Macguires of this world want change is because he knows that the big winners will be the big successful clubs, like Collingwood. Careful what you wish for.

This is just envy and sour grapes pretending to be rational.

I think this last is an important point. By trading out your first round pick and then using later round picks for academy/fs players you are essentially using your first round pick twice. I agree that this shouldn’t be allowed. That said, the clubs doing that are just using the rules as they stand. The inability of the AFL to think through the consequences of their rule changes has always been a disappointment. (Although I am sure that the conspiracy theorists think that they are getting their desired outcome. However when choosing between conspiracy and stupidity it us almost always the latter.)

A pretty insightful post.

They are [censored] in lots of ways but the AFL can’t be blamed for geography and clubs shouldn’t be penalised for benefiting from their local environment. Jackson showed us how to overcome that until we Melbourne’d it, as Praha said.

It seems to me that the original post is somewhat mis-guided because it confounds multiple concepts that are fundamentally distinct. Equalisation is about things like the salary cap, draft order and, through its "nothing up my sleeve" approach, compensation picks. So big clubs have the same salary cap as do small clubs and AFL distributions vary to enable all clubs to cover the cap, rich or poor. Weak teams get to pick first in the draft and are better compensated for free agency departures than are strong teams. A case in point being that we got pick 3 (Brayshaw) for James Frawley heading to Hawthorn, whereas Hawthorn only got pick 19 for Buddy going to Sydney at the same time. I could be wrong but I don't recall reading a lot of diatribes from incensed Melbourne supporters at the time. (Hawthorn supporters on the other hand ...) Free agency has absolutely nothing to do with equalisation (and, frankly, nor should it). Rather, it is a sop to the Players Association that is made for the sole purpose of stopping somebody taking the AFL to court over its restrictive trade practices involving player movements. Should that happen then, almost certainly, the AFL would lose and with it would go most of its approaches to equalisation because the consequence would be increased player freedoms. I would be willing to wager London to a brick on that the biggest losers in that scenario would be the weaker clubs and, in particular, the weaker Melbourne clubs because the big advantage everywhere else has over the Melbourne clubs is not having our fishbowl is lifestyle for the players. (Just getting out of town and heading down the highway to Geelong is enough, in case you missed it.) So, as a supporter of one of the weaker Melbourne clubs, you should be praising free agency with your every waking breath, whether we are beneficiaries or not. As for academies, obviously they are going to favour locations where kids don't grow up playing aussie rules by default, which is what they are meant to be doing. That said, it doesn't mean you can't generate such players if you are in the southern states. Kako at Essendon, for example. We may get some joy from ours this year and we should have in the past if those morons at the AFL hadn't changed the rules for a year and cost us Mac Andrew. But this isn't grounds for complaint. The northern clubs have to put in the effort for it to work and they have and, overall, it is good for the game, IMNSHO. That's not to say that everything is perfect. I am certainly open to the suggestion that there is room to tinker with the pricing of academy players to make things a bit fairer. But that is a long way from abolishing them. Finally, we have father/son picks. They are a sop to the fans. It is hard to believe that the AFL cares a tinker's cuss about the fans but this one is for those of us who think its great that a Daicos can be at Collingwood, a Silvagni at Carlton, or a White/Yze/Cordner/Woewodin/Brown/etc at Melbourne. They don't always work out but I, for one, like the notion of a bit of romance remaining in the game. God knows most other sources of joy have been squeezed out of the game by the AFL's cynicism and abject lack of principle that now pervades almost every part of the game (underlying the parlous state of the rules of the game, umpiring, and the abysmal performance of the tribunal, amongst many other things). It is not as though the only good parent/child players come from the strong clubs (although maybe the children of good players are more likely to be good players themselves, who knows). My guess is that these things go in cycles at best but are most likely just random events. In sum, it makes little sense demanding that the entire place be torn down just because things are travelling great for us at the minute. Especially when a bunch of the things being bundled together as the source of the problem shouldn't be bundled together at all. Most of our problems strike me as being a direct response to mismanagement on our own part and not a failure of equalisation policy. Where is Peter Jackson when we need him?

In my opinion, one of Peter Jackson's greatest legacies is that under his watch our Board became largely silent and invisible (after unsuccessful decades of being otherwise). Roffey's administration won a flag on the basis of what they inherited part way through the season. Since the flag they, KR in particular, have been way too visible and we have had diminishing success thereafter. I would much prefer that they stick to their backroom bean counting and otherwise STFU. During the season, football matters should be addressed by the Football department alone: Richo, Goody, and Max in the media and the player's response on the field. As others have pointed out, anything else is unhelpful noise.

To play the Devil's advocate, quite apart from the obvious financial incentives of having a longer finals season to both broadcasters and the league – which is exactly why we now have a final 8 rather than a final 4 – there are other arguments in favour of wildcard rounds. First, it notionally provides incentive for more teams to play hard up until the end of the season, with 9th and 10th positions on the ladder worth fighting for. Second, it provides some redress to the imbalanced fixturing. Given that teams don't play each other twice a season, clearly some teams have easier draws than others (ignoring the fact that when you play another team is sometimes important too). This is also true in the NBA. So a wildcard round provides an opportunity for teams finishing 9th or 10th to perhaps demonstrate that they finished below the teams finishing in 7th or 8th position largely as a consequence of a tougher draw and that they are, in fact, the stronger team more deserving of a finals berth. All of the above said, I would much rather the inequities in the draw be sorted out rather than reaching for the money.