Priority Access
Basic Stuff
Priority access consists of three different systems: northern academies, next generation academies (NGA), and father/son (F/S). The three system are similar but, because it’s the AFL, slightly different.
Northern Academies
I think they’re technically Club Academies, but mostly they’re called northern academies because they apply to the swans, giants, lions, and suns. Each club has a geographical area (related to the state they’re in) that they can sign academy players from. To be eligible, the player has to sign up and do enough stuff with the club to justify having priority access.
Clubs nominate players prior to the draft as eligible. Players cannot opt out of being eligible to be taken as an academy player, signing up to join an academy means signing up to be taken as an academy player.
Next Generation Academies
NGAs are the academies all the other clubs have. Each club is given a geographic area from which they can select indigenous and multicultural players. Sign-up and participation rules are the same as northern academies.
Same nomination rules as northern academies.
Father/Son
A player is eligible to be taken F/S if his father played at least 100 senior games for a club. If his father played at least 100 games at multiple clubs, he’s eligible for each club. There are extra SANFL/WAFL eligibility for the SA/WA teams relating to the period before they entered the AFL, but I don’t care.
In order to nominate as a F/S player, the player and club both have to nominate him. Sometimes players don’t nominate despite being eligible (Marc Murphy, Nick Blakey).
Bidding
Once the draft starts, a club “bids” on a priority access player by simply reading their name out as normal. At this point, the club with priority access is given the opportunity to match or pass. If they pass, the player is drafted to the bidding club, the draft continues as normal. It’s referred to as bidding mostly because of how the system used to work, don’t worry about it.
Matching Bids
It’s time for everyone’s favourite part of football: maths. Before going into detail, here’s the absolute basics of matching: teams spend a pick or picks equivalent to the calculated value of the bid, and get the player. Teams cannot choose which picks to match with, they must use whatever their next available pick is, then the pick after that if necessary, and so on. If a bid came in at 15 and a team had pick 16, 28, 35, and 44 they would lose pick 16. They could not choose to use the later picks first. The team that made the bid then selects another player, which can be another bid if they want.
Draft Value Index or Draft Points or Magic Fairy Dust
Each pick in the draft is assigned a points value, from 3000 points at pick 1 to 9 points at pick 73. You might see people talking about evaluating trades in terms of “points”, this is what they’re talking about. How are the points values calculated? The AFL paid some nerds to do some maths and they came up with the numbers. They haven’t changed since the system started back in 2015, but are due to change next year. In theory, picks worth the same number of points should be of the same value to teams. In practice, would you trade pick 8 for picks 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49? Pick 8’s worth fewer points, so…?
Figuring out the bid value
The points value of a bid is the points value of the pick being used, but with a 20% discount applied. For example a bid at pick 15 would be worth 1112 points, less 20%, so the matching team would need to provide 890 points. To make it a little more complex, the discount is actually 20% or 197 points, whichever is higher (197 is the discount at pick 18, so in effect all picks outside the theoretical first round have a higher discount). This means any pick from 56 onwards is free to match because the discount is greater than the points cost.
Spending Picks
Once the matching value has been calculated, the matching team then spends their next available pick. Just going to repeat here, it must be the next available pick. The possible outcomes are:
The matching pick exactly matches the matching value: the matching pick is moved to the back of the draft, match complete
The matching pick is worth more than the matching value: the matching pick is moved to a new position based on the remaining points after the matching value is subtracted, match complete.
The matching pick is worth less than the matching value: the matching pick is moved to the back of the draft, its value is subtracted from the matching value, and the process starts over with the matching team’s next pick
Once the matching team has provided enough picks, the bid is matched.
Completing the Process
Whatever pick the bidding team used is considered the pick the player was taken with, every pick in the draft is shuffled back one, and the bidding team goes again. For example, if Essendon bid on Bob Smith with pick 6 and the bid was matched by adelaide, the draft order would be adelaide taking Bob Smith at pick 6, and Essendon having pick 7. This is important because it changes the points value of every pick for any other bids that might come in later.
When Nobody Bids
If a northern academy or NGA player isn’t bid on in the national draft, the team he’s eligible for can add the player directly to the list as a Category B rookie (or Category A if they don’t have any spots free for Category B). Father/Son players can be directly added to the rookie list, but only as Category A rookies.
Obvious Loophole Stuff
If a team knows a bid is going to come, and they know that a combination of later picks is going to be worth more points than a high pick, and that those later picks are actually worth less to clubs than the high pick, obviously trade out high picks for later picks and match with later picks. Teams do in fact do this all the time. Teams even trade future picks out if they’re expecting a highly rated priority access player the next year.
The rule about only having as many picks as senior list spots is supposed to address it. The fact it doesn’t apply on draft night of course just means teams have to wait until the draft starts to make the trades.
Not Real Stuff
Up until this year, nominated F/S players had to be taken in the national draft, and could only be taken as rookies if they weren’t nominated F/S and weren’t drafted. This has been changed to the process outlined above.
Various NGA restrictions have applied over the years (can’t match bids in the top 20, can’t match bids in the top 40). This year, bids can be matched anywhere in the draft.
Complicated Stuff
Yes, that was the basics.
Passing and Pick Numbers
When a team passes in the draft, that pick disappears for the purposes of bid matching calculations. So if geelong took pick 46, then adelaide passed with pick 47, then it was Essendon’s pick, Essendon would have pick 47, not 48.
Multiple Eligibilities
If a player is both F/S and academy eligible, or eligible for multiple F/S clubs, it’s the player’s choice which has priority.
Matching Limits
Northern Academy teams are limited to matching 1 academy bid in the top 20 if they finish top 4, 2 if they finish top 8, and unlimited if they don’t make the finals.
Matching Debt
If a team doesn’t have enough points to match a bid, they can go into debt up to 1726 points, which is the number of draft points the premiers would be assigned. If the team does not have a future pick in a given round, the maximum debt is reduced accordingly. The next year, points are taken off the team’s pick in the round the bid came in. So if a team went into debt matching a 3rd round pick, their 3rd round pick would be impacted. This doesn’t happen very often, so a lot of the potential edges cases are unexplored.
Using Compensation Picks
The CBA states that compensation picks “cannot be utilised pursuant to the Father/Son rule” or academy players. My suspicion is that this rule exists because the bidding system outlined above isn’t actually enshrined in the league rules, and the system is as determined by the AFL from time to time. Under old systems, bidding and matching happened prior to the draft without points. If the system returned to something like that, it would make sense to exclude compensatory picks. My guess is that a team would be expected to use compensation picks as part of matching bids, and any attempt to point out what the rules say would be summarily ignored.
Multicultural and Indigenous
For NGA purposes, multicultural is a player born in Asia or Africa or a non-English speaking country outside Asia and Africa, or has one parent born in Asia in Africa, or both parents born in a non-English speaking country outside Asia and Africa. Indigenous is someone of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as such and is recognised by the community as such. The definitions are a little longer, but it’s basically that, all at the absolute discretion of the AFL.
