I’ve seen a number of threads hijacked by discussion on this, so thought we probably should have a thread to discuss the matter explicitly.
My opinion
I think the AFL will laugh at any request for priority picks. Every team who has received assistance in the last decade has done so after being completely useless for multiple years. We haven’t been. I don’t think the fact we haven’t won a final in 20 years matters either.
However, I do think the AFL is starting to realise they’ve stuffed up with equalisation. North is taking forever. WCE looks like it might as well. Both didn’t trade out lots of players and arguably did what the AFL wants in a rebuild. And its failed. Or failed to be timely. The extra picks for top 5 teams with picks pushed back is the AFL edging around into giving more assistance while trying to avoid admitting they stuffed up. And they would have to realise that a team starting a rebuild as Tassie comes in is in a bad spot. They don’t want 4-5 basket cases at the bottom of the ladder.
So, I would put in a request to do two things. (1) set the ground for the future when we will request priority picks. And (2) try and get some “soft” support. I’d be emphasising the bad position we’re in with Tassie coming in, how much our picks in recent years have been pushed back by other teams’ academy/father-son picks, our record without winning a final, and that we’ve done the AFL approved thing of trying not to rebuild - and this is where its led us.
The two things I’d be aiming to try and get is higher discounts or early access to our father-son and academy players, and more list spots. Possibly a waiver of the tax on coaching as well, as damn we’ll need more development coaching.
The big one for us is the academy & F/S picks. Getting an extra 10%-20% discount on matching would be HUGE for our ability to get some extra quality in across the next 2-3 years, and it isn’t as obvious to the average punter that the AFL has given that support. So, it possibly won’t cause outrage and they can kind of sneak us the support. Like maybe they did with McKay and Allen’s priority pick bands for North and WCE. There is also the argument it is just neutralising for our picks being pushed back the last few years (albeit, we got Kako).
I think the AFL missed an opportunity by not giving us first round compensation for Sam Draper. I assume it would have been close based on their formula so surely they could have used some discretion.
As @Tagger said, almost all teams who finish near the bottom have made multiple mistakes to get there. Maybe less so in the naughties as teams deliberately tanked to get those top 5 priority picks (e.g. Hawks), but since that has been removed I don’t think any team has deliberately rebuilt (Richmond 2024 maybe the exception).
If failures and incompetence by a team meant a team didn’t get AFL assistance, nobody would get any assistance.
And really, let’s not redo the Dodorro discussion here. Whether it was recruitment, board strategy, development or S&C. We’ve clearly failed, we can all agree on that. Let’s not get into a fight about exactly where we failed.
Hmm, once again is my later thread going to survive because its parked in the correct forum?
My several day late VFL match day thread survived with the older thread merged in because (I assume) I’d put it in the VFL forum. Now the AFL assistance thread in the Dustin Fletcher forum has been closed …
We blew our chance last year. We should have made the case for help when Draper was going as a free agent and they could have given us a top 10 pick without explanation.
List spots is the request we should get and request - I’d add more soft cap too so we can manage them.
I don’t think it will fly to have an unfair advantage on academies or father sons.
We ain’t a northern non football market club.
Given all the top forecasted talent is now going to go too Port, Carlton and Essendon and those three are all in struggle town we should be lobbying for no change to it.
the premiers and the suns have been able to gorge on their own academy talent to be where they are. And Sydney and GWS too an extent too. So lifting the ladder is just going to penalise poor clubs at the expense of the good ones
West coast massively overpaid for Tim Kelly, hung on to aging premiership players, did some of the worst ever trading of good draft picks you’ll ever see these last few years. Then received compo
Soft cap assistance is what we will need. It should be tiered anyway as it disadvantages young teams. Young teams require more time and money into development. They also often don’t have the benefit of experienced, successful older players who play the role of development coaches both on and off the field. They also don’t have to pay out their coaches…
If it wasn’t aimed a specific club, but say the bottom 4 or 6 then no one can really claim it’s unfair, as those clubs clearly need help and supporters can’t point at the 9th coach within a club and say “having them is unfair!”
The interesting thing with WCE is they went almost the entire reverse approach for their rebuild after 2006. Not entirely driven by them of course. But Judd leaving, cutting a few premiership players early, meant they started with some key picks/Kennedy, they picked up some early good draft picks, raided Brissie for some go-home factor, and a decade or so later they won a premiership.
But after the 2017 premiership they tried to top up and stay up, and its all gone pear shaped. This may reflect that its a lot harder to attract top free agents to WA than it is for the top Victorian clubs.