The AFL mid-season draft is creating unease in SANFL relationships between the clubs and headquarters - and lapses in memories

SA football is having history repeat with the revival of the AFL mid-season draft ... but some club leaders have very poor memories.

• End the AFL’s pre-season
• Reality Bites: best sports gossip in SA
• Big task for Small
• Sign-up for Rucci’s Roast newsletter

SANFL club leaders James Fantasia (Norwood) and Luke Powell (Woodville-West Torrens) argue it is not a “good look” for the State league if a player starts the season with one club and finishes with another.

They are both far too young to remember the golden era of SANFL football in the 1950s-1970s. The “bow and arrow” days of football, as Neil Craig would say.

It was when June 30 was known as a significant date on the football calendar. It was the last chance for any SANFL player to seek a clearance to another league club.

And many did in the 1960s and 1970s. Be it by a lack of opportunity, a fall out with the coach or an offer too good to refuse, players did change clubs in-season.

There were battles over clearance fees. Tribunal hearings. And SANFL players finished the season playing against guys they knew as team-mates in pre-season training.

In 1976 - on May 17 - one of Norwood’s most-loved country recruits Noel Pettingill cleared his locker at The Parade to end his 137-game league career with the Redlegs ... to join Sturt. He had played for Norwood on May 8 against Sturt and less than a fortnight later he was a Double Blues player seeing his Redlegs team-mates as rivals. He was eligible to poll Magarey Medal votes for two clubs.

It was the way of SANFL football through the 1950s, 60s and 70s - as it is with European football each January when the market opens with players crossing divides in the same way Pettingill did in 1976.

Fantasia and Powell have made their protest at the thought of either the Crows or Port Adelaide picking up an SANFL player in the upcoming AFL mid-season draft and using such a recruit against them in the State league.

The oft-quoted example is Port Adelaide claiming Norwood midfielder Mitch Grigg and then putting the Magarey Medallist in a Magpies jumper to play against the Redlegs in the race for the SANFL premiership.

The eight “traditional” SANFL clubs want to restore the ways of the 1990s when any AFL-listed player not selected by the Crows or Power for AFL duty were sent back to their original SANFL clubs.

Pity the player ... He spends all week at West Lakes and Alberton learning a playbook written by AFL coaches Don Pyke and Ken Hinkley. He then returns to suburbia at the weekend to be challenged by an SANFL coach to play to his ways. Heaven help him if there is a running game in his AFL playbook and a kicking game at his SANFL club.

The AFL mid-season draft is a contentious move from AFL House, 26 years after it became a redundant recruiting means - as noted by the last mid-season draftee being Brownlow Medallist Brad Hardie by Sydney as he was hobbling on one leg with WAFL club South Fremantle. Hardie never went to the Swans - and the mid-season draft was packed away as the gap between the national league and State leagues made it too difficult for an SANFL player to immediately step into an AFL line-up.

New Sturt coach Nathan Grima made a sound point on SEN1629 last week when he said: “The AFL has all the resources in the world; if you can’t go 22 weeks with 44 blokes on your list, what are you doing wrong?”

The hysteria and relevance of the AFL mid-season draft will be tested by reality - rather than perception - in June.

How many AFL clubs will take up their picks?

Is there an SANFL player who in June who can be considered ready for AFL action?

Or will AFL clubs use the mid-season draft to “pre-screen” potential draftees - teenagers who were overlooked in the national draft but who have surprised in the first 10 weeks of the new season?

The SANFL clubs have good reason to be concerned. And by the tone of their meeting with the SANFL executive at the Naval Club at Hutt Street last month, there is to be some uneasy moments relationships between club land and headquarters in the upcoming months.

The SANFL clubs want to dictate where AFL recruits play in their competition.

The SANFL executive will remind the clubs that the Crows and Power have an agreement that allows them to keep all their recruits in the Crows and Magpies SANFL teams.

But the concept of a “bad look” if a player wears two SANFL jumpers in the same season is far from a new threat to the State league. If Fantasia and Powell look through their own clubs’ history books they will find the Redlegs and Eagles had no problem with swapping players in-season to the June 30 clearance deadline in the old days when the SANFL was so, so grand.

[e-mail]