I think you’re correct, but looking around I don’t have any concrete evidence. From what I can tell, there are no specific rules about how paying contracts at another team works (maybe the termination payment rules kind of cover it?) other than “the AFL will decide things from time to time” general rules.
There is a prohibition on trading out a player in the same trade period you trade them in, but I don’t think there’s any rule about trading a player the year they sign a contract. So could you get Shiel to sign a new contract in September, then trade him to geelong and pay him his “existing” contract, effectively paying for a new contract? Perhaps. Seems like the kind of thing the AFL might decide to punish you for under the general “behaviour prejudicial to player movement” category if you didn’t get prior approval. I’ll see if I can find anything more specific.
Agreed. I can’t ever recall an example of a player moving on new terms to a club where as an act of trade value-contribution the selling club tips some money in to the contract. I sense if it’d happened once, it’d immediately be a big mechanic in trade negotiations, i.e. it would happen in ~ 50% of trades as it’s such a “hack” to lubricate deals.
And essentially ties in to trading salary cap by proxy, which I recall Brad advocating for about a year ago (no wonder given it’d help us so massively).
Also on your “trading out in the year you sign”, that’s come up a few times on here but I’ve never seen it definitively answered either. Didn’t that come up with Henneman? Or Heffernan? They were before my time.
It happened with Heffernan, and then a rule got floated to prevent it happening again. I can’t see whether that actually got implemented because the Wikipedia entry links to an article from the time with Paul Connors saying it should be removed from the new CBA proposal.
It definitely doesn’t exist any more. Schache signed in June of 2017 and got traded to the dogs the same year.
Absolutely incredible work as always! I had to chuckle at this ^^^ as all I was thinking was our Adam would be sweet in this scenario as we have plenty of Chris’.
Updated the trading post to explain that the restrictions about which particular future picks you can trade out only apply to two years from now, not next year (i.e. there are no restrictions on 2026 picks, but there are on 2027 picks).
I saw Cal Twomey during Trade Radio making a point to clarify that’s how it works with two year future trading, and I trust him to be right if he’s deliberately pointing it out as different to previous years.
The rules of the priority picks given to compensate for player matching:
#1 you must finish in the bottom 5 #2 you must use your ‘natural’ first pick #3 that natural first pick must be pushed back by a bid on a player
then you get a pick at the end of night 1 (ie. after the first round including Band 2 free agency compo is finished). At that point you can trade the pick. If at the pick on day 2 you have no list spots you lose it (if untraded).
The priority pick is after round 1 picks, Band 2 compo picks, is before Round 2 picks, and are in reverse ladder order.
Therefore:
You can only get 1 priority pick from this
If your pick is pushed back due to Band 1 free agency compo or the AFL giving out additional priority picks that doesn’t trigger eligibility.
If you get Band 1 FA compo that extra pick isn’t impacted by these rules.
What @Ants has for the new compensation rules is correct, but there a bunch of parts of my original post that are out of date now around discounts and such. So it’s currently the 2025 explainer with a partial 2026 addendum. Quote anything in the first few posts at your own peril until I have a really boring Saturday at some point in the next couple of months.