I know this would open a can of worms, but in all seriousness if the AFL is serious about doing this to equalise the comp they should seriously look at retrospectively taxing teams that have benfitted from their previous sub par rules.
Seriously how is Bewick/Salopeck/Darwish/Pilot/Rodan etc worth 2+ picks each or going into deficit for the future draft when Daicos/Darcy et al are somehow worth a single pick.
And dont get me started on the farce that was GC and the last draft. Teams seriously should have bid on their players like patterson at 2/3 not 5. If that had of happened i can guarantee they would not have been able to match all. Which is part of the problem, other clubs have allowed this problem to fester and now the AFL is changing rules that is going to impact the other clubs the most.
The reality is, theyâre only worth 2 picks if you donât have access to a pick high enough.
If Essendon has pick four in the Bewick draft, and heâs available at that pick, they can just take him.
Itâs clubs trying to get a âbargainâ by getting ahead of a bid or trading into future drafts to avoid a bit that ensure the player requires multiple picks to match.
The best way to look at it is you pay multiple picks because unless you finish low enough, you donât have access to that player.
I understand this doesnât help with teams that have previously been able to access talent âunnaturallyâ, but thatâs the simple reality of a system that has changed over time,
For what itâs worth, I think the planned system is much better and will lead to a lot more academy / father son selections being left to the open pool (or clubs trading out assets to ensure they can match bids on multiple F/S & Academy prospects.
I know the main ones will be playing for Calder in the U/18s. You can watch streams of these games via the Coates app (or maybe itâs the AFL app now, I think it migrated across) during the season.
Last year these were live and on replay.
Some (like Justice and Bewick) will play in the national championships too, which are generally available on the AFL and sometimes on Foxtel.
We are discouraged from thinking there is a conspiracy of the AwFL against us.
But consider, and just restricting ourselves to the last decade or so:
Saga - we all know they did that to use us a convenient scapegoat to protect teams who won flags on PEDs (Hawthorn, WCE, Collingwood, Geelong)
no compensation at all for imposing the Saga on us (FCFC and Melbourne got multiple first picks as a consequence of AwFL-imposed penalties)
As you said, Daniher draft
absolutely egregious umpiring, best exemplified by the Rampe case, against which there is no defence whatsoever but nevertheless Gil declared it âsensible umpiringâ
even many more cases where maggots decided games, eg Anzac Day is the next most blatant
heaps of other stuff
Bewick draft
Of course apologists and Vichy supporters will say they relaxed the rules [by the merest smidgin] so we got Kako.
Now ask yourself: what would someone NOT conspiring against us do differently from all that?
Well, most of that is BS to begin with. If you want Melbourne or Carltonâs picks, finish near the bottom. Or look at how the changes to academy rules screwed over St Kilda or Melbourne. And really, you think the umpiring is a sign???
The changes to the f/s rule certainly affected us in the Daniher draft, but itâs worth remembering that they were actually brought in significantly earlier. The idea was (I think) to prevent the Bulldogs getting rock-solid guaranteed gun Ayce Cordy (âwho?â I hear you ask, and itâs a fair questionâŚ) for a bargain-basement third round pick in the 2008 draft. They finished high up that year, so they ended up spending pick 14. I think we were just the first club after that to have a top-end father-son talent on the cards.
While thereâs plenty of stuff the AFL HAVE done over the past decade and a half to screw over EFC, itâs a bit of a stretch to claim martyrdom over a draft rule change that was instituted four full years before it affected us when Daniher came along in 2012.