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I didn't want to derail any of the trade threads (I.e. sylvia to Bombers) with a discussion about FA so thought I'd start a thread. There has been discussion about the worth of the compensation picks and whether they should be awarded. It seems people are on both sides of this and I'd like to understand some of the reasons. Personally I think compensation picks are a must. Clubs have a limited number of assets, players and draft picks, and when you lose a player with value it is hard to replace. To buy another established player you either trade players or picks, or replace then with FAs. Regarding bringing in FAs, this requires two things or at least one of them: the money/cap space to buy a player by paying over the odds and/or a desirable club ie facilities or on field performance. In theory, low ranked clubs should have just as much chance of bringing in FAs as high clubs; they should have more money to buy players as their playing list should be less expensive than the good clubs. In reality it seems that the poor clubs don't have this money. The AFL CBA means that all clubs must pay a minimum amount which is quite big (around 95% of the cap), so there is little cap space to work with to just buy a big fish. Additionally most of the poorer clubs don't pay 100% because they can't afford to. Even if a FA was available and interested they can't afford to throw the money at them. What I have seen so far is that the good quality free agents are interested in moving to finals bound clubs while mid tier players are more likely to chase a pay day. As a result those low ranked clubs can successfully overpay for average players but will struggle to bring in guns. A massive pay packet would be required to land this sort of fish. I think compensation is definitely required to make sure that free agency is fair to all clubs regardless of money or ladder position. Otherwise I think we will see the gap between the string and rich and the poor and poor get wider. Would love to hear some thoughts on these ideas. edit: cut a bit out that wasn't relevant