Draft Pick Basics
More on the drafts later, but before we can discuss trades, we need to know about draft picks. Picks in the national draft are assigned as follows:
1st round
1 - 18th
2 - 17th
…
10 - 9th
11 - lowest finishing loser of elimination finals
12 - highest finishing loser of elimination finals
13 - lowest finishing loser of semi finals
14 - highest finishing loser of semi finals
15 - lowest finishing loser of preliminary finals
16 - highest finishing loser of preliminary finals
17 - loser of Grand Final
18 - Premiers
2nd round
Repeat, starting with 19 for the 18th finishing team
Infinite Rounds, Infinite Picks
Every team is assigned one pick in each round, and there are an infinite number of rounds. Very rarely does anything after the fifth round matter, but the picks do still exist. If a team traded out their first through fourth round picks and then traded every player on their list for no return, they would be able to draft a whole new team using their fifth through forty third round picks. As long as a team has a senior list space available, they have a draft pick available.
Draft Pick Slightly Less Basics
Free Agency Compensation picks
Free agency compensation picks fall into one of 5 bands:
- Immediately after the club’s natural first round pick
- End of the first round
- Immediately after the club’s natural second round pick
- End of the second round
- Immediately after the club’s natural third round pick
By “natural” here, what I mean is the pick that the club was assigned in that round according to finishing order. It’s not a term in general use, I just need some way to talk about it. So if a club finished 14th, they have pick 5. If they had traded that pick away the previous year and instead have the first round pick of the premiers (pick 19), the band 1 compensation pick would still be pick 6.
By way of example, let’s take the current draft order:
- eagles (natural)
- richmond (natural)
- richmond (traded from north)
- Essendon (natural)
- Essendon (traded from melbourne)
Let’s say the eagles and north both lose a free agent worth band 1 compensation, the new draft order would be
- eagles (natural)
- eagles (band 1 compensation)
- richmond (natural)
- richmond (traded from north)
- north (band 1 compensation using their natural pick position)
- Essendon (natural)
- Essendon (traded from melbourne)
If multiple teams get “end of xth round” compensation picks, they are placed in natural draft order (an eagles end of first round compensation pick would come before a brisbane end of first round compensation pick).
Priority Picks
Bad teams can apply to the AFL for assistance packages, which may include extra draft picks. These picks can be whatever and wherever the AFL likes. End of round, middle of round, pick 17 because it’s Andrew Dillon’s favourite number, whatever. As with compensation picks, they are inserted wherever and push the rest of the picks down.
Round definitions
It used to matter more when more rules were defined in terms of rounds, but the second round begins with the second pick assigned to the wooden spoon team (or the 17th team if that pick is used in a matched bid, and so on). Everything before that is the first round. So while in theory the first round is 18 picks, it can easily end up as 25 or more.