Still trying to find where it was reported about the restrictions for teams finishing top 4. That previous link makes it sound like it was implemented then removed.
Found this
The sooner the northern clubs are full of genuine talent from the northern states the better.
Elite talent from the Northern suburbs of Melbourne should be playing for the Essendon football club.
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Not sure how relevant an article from 2017 given how often the AFL chops and changes their rules but cheers.
They still owe Geelong this for Bowes surely
Cheers, good to know.
That’s when the top four rule is originally from. Northern academy rules have been pretty stable for a while (except for the couple of years where gold coast could just pre-list academy players before the draft around 2019), it’s mostly been NGA rules that have gone wacky.
I don’t understand the angst around the Queensland academy draftees that are projected to go early in the draft pool.
These players would not even exist without those academies, so basically they are ‘extra’ to the baseline draft pool and do not dilute the usual talent available for selection. If anything it is positive, because with more talented players in a draft pool it drives higher competition and improvement across their peers.
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We don’t have that problem, so don’t worry.
Yeah I agree - its just how it looks for people as they are in the draft but not really there - I wonder if it would be easier if these players were allocated a value based on a panels decision and then those draft picks were taken away and those players went straight to the clubs rather than going through a draft where they are not even truly available - same as father son
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Good. Neither are viable longer term options unfortunately.
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You don’t understand how the academies provide an unfair advantage to one or two clubs that is directly at odds with the concept of having an equalised competition?
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I don’t understand why people think the draft is compromised. The academy-tied players are a stream of talent additional to the usual heartland base, not something being ‘taken away’.
So there is no net reduction in access to talent (broadly) as a result of these new talent streams and in a world before the northern academies, these players don’t even exist.
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If we are trying to work out who Essendon will draft my guess is it will be focusing on delivery from midfield to forward.
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For me, the real point, is that that talent does exist now.
So tick for the AFL, they’ve managed to get some kids in a non traditional footy state interested and converting to the professional level on a regular basis.
Thats a great outcome.
But the academy pathway should be a pathway to the professional level, not a pathway specifically into one or two AFL clubs only.
They don’t let VIC or WA or SA kids limit themselves to one or two preferred clubs in their home state, this is really no different.
To artificially prop up expansion clubs in nsw and qld to keep them ‘relevant’(which actually means artificially ensuring they remain successful/playing finals regularly and indefinitely through maintaining a dedicated and unfair level of access to top tier talent that other clubs are not afforded)is to put clubs like Essendon at a perpetual disadvantage.
Again, the whole point of having equalisation measures in place is to maintain a level playing field with equal access to talent.
And yes there are different examples of levels of inequity at play accross various facets of the sport, however the draft is the fundamental pillar of equalisation so to compromise it in the way they have renders the whole concept moot which is exactly what they’ve achieved here.
And to pre-empt the question, yes I think that all talent including NGA, f/s etc should be subject to the open draft as it’s the only way we get back to or at least close enough, to the actual equalisation measures the competition requires.
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The problem though is that its specifically NOT a tick for the AFL. AFL used to run the talent pathways in QLD and NSW and they sucked at it. Those pathways have started to take off since the AFL handed it over to the clubs, created recruitment zones and incentivised those clubs to put effort into it.
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Yep fair point - but thats still the AFL creating the conditions to engineer that outcome
Regardless, the end result remains the same in that it further entrenches inequity, directly contravenes the concept of equalisation and disadvantages clubs like Essendon
Okay but your point was that the AFL engineered these outcomes, and therefore we can just swap over to having these northern kids just streamed into the main draft pool.
My point is that you cant. If the northern clubs don’t have that incentive to invest and nurture the talent pathways in their areas they’ll go back to not doing it, the AFL will have to take over that responsibility again, and they’ll suck at it again, so the river of talent will dry up again.
The AFL suck at it because they’re a bureaucratic organization that sucks at basically everything that doesn’t directly grow their revenue. Being close to junior footy I can tell you - they’re about as unprofessional and uninterested as it gets with this stuff.
So in this situation we don’t get to have our cake and eat it too. We either have northern clubs with direct buy in and incentive nurturing talent pathways and expanding the pool - or we take those incentives away and we lose it.
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We’re not having our cake and eating it too.
Most fans never wanted those clubs in the first place precisely because we knew it was always going to lead to where we are now with what effectively amounts to ‘anti-equalisation’ measures designed to ensure the ongoing success of northern expansion clubs.
What we are talking about here IMO is the fundamental concept of genuine fairness in a professional sport which in the context of the AFL has been on the fast track to almost complete erosion since the introduction of the suns and gws.
There’s also an argument to be made that if these northern academy kids didn’t exist, the northern clubs would also be draining the talent away from the traditional states talent pool in each draft.
Say for example there was no talent coming outta nsw and qld academies and 3 northern states teams finish below us on the ladder, they take 3 Vic players, so we end up with a player technically 3 picks worse.
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