Live pick trading

I’m not being a smart ■■■■. But in time people will like it.

It adds more buzz. Right now pick 48 is so boring coming into the draft.

If there was live trading we would be debating whether jackets was gonna pull a rabbit out of his hat because he may rate kid X,y,z super high etc etc.

It’s also good for positive spin, because of you trade down you can say how good you did receive: extra picks

And if you you trade up you definitely get the buzz of the club “getting their man”.

Obvisously I’m all in for it. Just not players as well…

in our sport 2 good player >3-5 ok ones.

Cool your jets, AFL administration lover.

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What is the point of this idea? Why does anyone need the draft to be any longer and more complicated than it already is?

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The talent pool isn’t deep enough.
It’s kind of pointless without trading listed players, which no-one wants.
It’s a great way for clubs to implode when they go, ‘Ooh, that club just got something shiny, I’ll swap you my house for him!’

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Is that last point a pro or a con?

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Completely agree. Would be a ridiculous idea

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So what I’m piecing together here is something like this. (I’m randomly giving picks to clubs, don’t over analyse this.)

We go into the draft with picks 10, 28, 50, 75 wanting the following players and predict their various pick ranges:

Player A (Pick 7- 15)
Player B (Pick 15-20)
Player C (Pick 20-30)

Hawthorn picks Player A with pick 9. Bastards. We no longer need pick 10 to take Player B, as we’d be paying overs.

We put out to the market that we are willing to downgrade pick 10. We get offered from St Kilda pick 15 & 23 for 10 & 28. We accept, take Players B and C. If we hadn’t done the pick swap, we’d have paid overs for player B and probably missed out on Player C.

St Kilda move up the order and get the player they wanted, we move down and get two players we rated rather than one.

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I don’t know why it needs to be left to draft night.

Why don’t they do it during the trade period? Besides that, NFL is so based on positional players. Players aren’t as versatile as AFL players are.

They do also do it in the NBA, which only has two rounds and more player flexibility. Then again, you can trade players for cash in the NBA, so…

I can kinda see the argument. Basically, it allows your club to react more dynamically to the way the draft pans out.

The obvious case: your recruiter is absolutely in love with player X but he is expected to go in the 10-15 range and you traded out your first this year so you don’t get to pick until #30. You tried to trade into the first round to get him, but nobody was biting. Come draft night when it turns out he’s still on the board at 20 - well, now you might be able to do something. You couldn’t trade up to 10 to grab your target,. but trading up to 21 might be much more possible, even though you didn’t try in trade week because you assumed he’d be gone by then.

Or: you really need to draft a key defender this year, and there’s a few good prospects. You had a high pick in the first round and picked up a mid as best available, and you planned to pick up a kpd with your 2nd rounder. However, in the early teens the defenders start getting snapped up one after the other, ahead of where you thought they’d go. Real concern you’ll miss out on all the ones you rate. You can potentially tray to trade up so you can fill your needs, rather than leave a hole on your list cos you misread the way the draft was going.

First problem i can see with this is that both my examples have teams wanting to trade up. Dreaming up a scenario in which they’d want to trade down is a fair bit harder. Which means it probably wouldn’t happen unless massive overs were offered.

Second problem is that clubs would have very limited currency to make these trades happen. If we restrict draft-day trading to picks rather than players (which is obviously 100% necessary, cos players should imho retain veto rights over getting traded to somewhere, and expecting them to make this sort of snap decision within moments on draft day is just not somewhere we should go), then most clubs have what, a couple of picks this year and a couple more next year to deal with?

Mind you, the WORST possible argument for all this is ‘it’d make the draft more interesting for viewers!’ Ye gods, even if this is true (which is debatable, most likely it’d be all “there will now be a 10 minute delay while West Coast discusses a trade offer for pick 25 behind closed doors, during which time we’ll have Brian Taylor and Basil Zempilas babble continually about the #1 pick cos he’s the only draftee whose name they know”) the purpose of the draft is to allow clubs to actually build a damn list. Careers and premierships and millions of dollars and, in some cases, the continued existence of a club, hangs on it. If you’re messing with that just to make it more telegenic, you should keep your hands off.

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Only reason?

I thought the reason was to let Hawthorn turn pick 80 into pick 25.

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I think the most likely case someone trades down is the academy manipulation case. Academy or F/S bid comes in, team does an ad hoc trade to their points advantage which involves trading down for multiple picks, then matches the bid. Which as I say it seems like something you’d want to prevent, but it’s what came to mind.

This. As SplitRound mentions it’s unlikely there would be many trades in practice but it’s hard to argue against a system that provides clubs with flexibility on draft day.

on a sidenote, it’s interesting how alot of people seem to think players have to much say in not fulfilling contracts and that they are basically pointless in todays game.
yet seems no one wants to give clubs the ability to break contracts willy nilly and trade people without permission.

seems like there is no repercussions for players breaking contracts, case in point ablett, unless i didn’t catch the part where he paid back the 300 odd dollars over what he would have earnt, if his contract wasn’t front ended.

It’s an interesting concept, but as others have said, don’t see how it works all that much in the afl with as others say, less active rounds and talent pools, and less teams and playing rosters ??

People legit don’t understand contracts. It drives me insane.

Tell me.

If Lachie Weller was out of contract would he have gone for pick 2?

Fark No. Now try and convince me contracts aren’t worth anything again???

A rookie contract in the NFL is worth Enough money to live anywhere.

The 4-year minimum base salaries for players in the 2017 draft are as follows: $465,000 (Year 1), $540,000 (Year 2), $615,000 (Year 3), $690,000 (Year 4).

Many AFL contracts are under 100k. Not enough to live in Fitzroy…

That’s why you can’t trade player willy nilly. Once they were paid a certain amount Then the player power is gonna decrease like American professional sports.

The “buzz”, man.

And, of course, justification for another 5 or 6 “fact finding” missions to the US for the AFL executive team. Cultural cringe, alive and well.

Anyone arguing “for the viewer experience” for something which isn’t even shown on FTA doesn’t really understand the Aus TV market. Would be about 15 people watching the draft.