I feel like the issue isn’t the father son rule in principal, it’s the magic fairy draft points calculation being a broken system. Brisbane gave up picks 40, 42, 43 and 46 for Ashcroft, one of the very best in the draft. This is nonsense. How many players taken in the 40s become stars of the game vs top 5 picked players?
■■■■ all is the answer.
The only way I see it working is that the club wanting their father son selection must include a pick within the same round as the original bid comes. So with Ashcroft, because the bid came in the first round, Brisbane must include a first round pick as part of their points package. They can top it up with other ■■■■, but the guts of the bid comes from a pick that is at least somewhat close to the original bid.
This at just keeps clubs somewhat honest and they don’t get top end talent for absolute peanuts.
Can’t muster up a first round pick as part of the package? Too bad, you must not want that father son enough.
Something like that is what I’d look at too. Seems like the most sensible solution. I’d maybe tweak it a bit and instead say that you have to include at least 1 pick in the next 18 picks after the bid. This is better than the ‘same round’ thing cos otherwise bids towards the end of the round are harder to match. If your player was bid on with pick 17, the only option for matching would be to somehow acquire pick 18. Which seems silly, and difficult if the team with pick 18 for some reason refuses to play ball.
I have said this before, but will say again. If they lock out fs picks from the first round of the draft then this would be grossly unfair to the clubs which have fs coming through. The pies have the Daicos brothers who will play for the next 10 years, this is a huge advantage over a team like the dons who could miss out on Bewick because of the change of the rule. They have to grandfather players already in the system to make it as fair as possible.
Yes the club should be fighting it, instead of endorsing changes like brad incredibly did the other day.
What surprises me is the new points system hasn’t even come in yet, that’s this year’s draft, at least see how that goes first.
If I had a choice out of cutting off access to father sons or nga though, I’d go father son. It’s one player every 5 to 10 years, our nga will be pumping out multiple quality players each year with our zone access.
Based on the assumption that everything said publicly is what is said behind closed doors and that they have no further information than what is publicly known.
We’d just go back to the rubbish top 40 lockout rule again but change 40 to some made up number! Why bother developing players in your academy to just see them walk to another club…makes zero sense and is a financial cost/commitment. Surely having to have a draft selection in that round is a decent start. Gold Coast, you want 3 of those top picks then you need 3 x first rounders…that’ll make them pay up!
The thing is, we can all come up with much better systems for matching. I’ve suggested in the past that you can’t match with more than 2 picks, which would do similar to the above. Teams paying unders isn’t a good reason to get rid of F/S because everyone except the AFL can quickly figure out a way to make player matching fairer.
It’s all so ■■■■■■■ stupid from the AFL. They re-opened NGA bid matching to include the first round August last year. Literally 12 months ago they said they were aligned with clubs that it was important for their investment in the academies, etc, etc. There were changes for 2024, 2025, and 2026 in that announcement. A two and a half year roadmap. They didn’t get one year into it before they started talking about changing it completely. It’s just ■■■■■■■ pathetic.
Set out the rules, say “these are the rules for 2025-2030, with the intention of reviewing over the course of 2029, flagging any major changes likely to occur by the end of that year, and announcing the 2031-2036 rules before the bye week of 2030”. Or align them with the CBA or whatever.
Someone should be at a press conference and say “don’t you think it’s pretty embarrassing that you can’t provide clubs with any certainty about what the rules will be 12 months from now when they’re trying to draft players who will still be in the league 12 years from now?”
It’s more how loose their own criteria is for nga. I know I harp on about this a lot, but the kid that finds out he’s 1/50th indigenous at 17 years old then jumps into a local clubs academy type of thing.
Or the kid who has an Aussie born and bred dad that played footy his whole life, but married a lady that was born overseas and moved to Australia at 3 years old. Their son is nga.
Let’s bring the criteria back to it’s intention of focusing on kids that come from non traditional afl backgrounds, to increase multicultural players in the afl and we’ll have a good system (which flows onto more players and fans from these communities which is super important).
Who was it in the media the other day that said ‘the afl trying to please every group, ends up pleasing nobody’? I think this applies to the nga’s too and their strange and rubbery eligibility criteria is going to kill off a really important program (like when they changed it to outside 40 access a few years ago).
Again, an easy fix. You nominate kids for your NGA/academy when they’re 13 or so. Then, you can’t add anyone who is older. At least if they ‘find’ their heritage it has to be when they’re still uncertain prospects, that the club can guide through.
Can also tighten up the rules with regards to parents overseas, and say that father-son trumps academies and NGAs (just after the Rodan’s come through!).