After a 26-year break, the AFL mid-season draft will resume but deliver very little — even less than it did in 1993
A RETURN to the AFL mid-season draft has created much hysteria from the state leagues, but a review of the new recruiting rules suggests very few players will be claimed from the SANFL and beyond.
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SHAKESPEARE would savour the hysteria in the AFL’s announcement of the return of the mid-season draft after a 26-year break.
So will the state leagues be ransacked by the 18 AFL league clubs once again being able to remodel their player lists after the national draft in late November?
Let’s work through how the new AFL recruiting rules would have worked had they been in place in the recently completed season.
The first part of the AFL’s new recruiting rules allow the clubs to put players who are seriously injured in the pre-season (December 1-March 15) on an inactive list — and replace them with players left behind in the recent draft pool.
Only three AFL clubs would have benefited as long as they had salary cap space — Carlton (Sam Docherty), Collingwood (Tyson Goldsack) and Sydney (Kurt Tippett).
This would not have led to a heavy raid on the state leagues.
By mid-season, the only clubs that can take part in the revived mid-season draft are those with room of their lists.
Also, players have to re-nominate for this draft. So if Magarey Medallist Mitch Grigg would prefer to see out his commitment with Norwood in the SANFL rather than claim a second chance in the AFL, he can stay on The Parade.
By late June, Carlton would have had need to look at the mid-season draft to help club champion Patrick Cripps carry the workload in the midfield. Would have Grigg earned a call to Princes Park?
By Grigg’s own admission, he was carrying weight this season. His fitness would not have allowed him to get through a full AFL game in July. So the Blues would not have drafted him.
Port Adelaide would have wanted ruck insurance to cover the emerging problems with All-Australian Patrick Ryder. So which SANFL-based ruckman would have been able to step out of suburbia in late June to carry the Power ruck battery in July?
The gap between AFL and SANFL fitness has widened since 1993 when the AFL clubs found the mid-season draft had reached its point of redundancy. In 2019, there would not be a heavy raid of well-established, mature players from the state league clubs.
More likely is AFL clubs revisiting the 19-year-old who were on the verge of the rookie draft in late November. Seven months later, AFL clubs might have seen some further development in these teenagers — and want to introduce them to their programs on a three-month trial.
Mid-season draftees can be contracted to stay on the next season, making it prudent for AFL clubs to trial such players in July-August. Again, there is hardly going to be too many who fit the bill — and these players are highly unlikely to be key players in a State league program.
AFL football boss Steve Hocking might learn from last week’s experience that it would be better to avoid the inevitably hysteria by communicating better with the State leagues and grassroots of Australian football.
But the thought the sky is about to fall in on the SANFL with an AFL mid-season draft is, as Shakespeare would say, much ado about very little.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au