Death-riding a rival after trading with them, it’s a dangerous game even without handing over superstars
Two clubs are about to reap the rewards of trading future picks with battling teams. And it’s exactly why Essendon and Carlton need to be careful before they trade Charlie Curnow or Zach Merrett.
People only remember the future pick disaster stories.
As Geelong tries to pry Charlie Curnow out of Carlton with three first-round draft selections, the Cats are hoping the Blues keep those stories front of mind.
In this upcoming draft alone we have evidence of a pair of clubs which traded into future first-rounders and are about to reap the benefits.
Richmond traded its No. 27 draft pick and its 2025 second-rounder last November as North Melbourne secured Matt Whitlock but the price was the current No. 4 overall draft pick.
Melbourne might have won out by trading its future first-rounder to Essendon for the rights to the silky Xavier Lindsay but it means the Dons have their current No. 6 selection as well as a bevy of later selections last year (28, 40, 46, 54 and 65) which helped it round out what could be a very strong 2024 draft haul.
Geelong is making the point to Carlton to consider the possibilities of those future trades, pointing out Sydney made the grand final last year but plummeted all the way to 10th this year.
What if Carlton has Geelong’s 2026 first-rounder in its keeping and the Cats finish 12th in 2026 like they did in 2024?
Then a package of three first-round picks might allow the Blues to shore up their medium-term future and collect points for 2026 father-son Cody Walker.
And yet the problem for both Hawthorn and Geelong as they try to secure Zach Merrett and Curnow isn’t just that the Hawks and Cats look like rock solid prospects next year.
It is that trading them A-graders makes them even more of a certainty to be in the league’s top handful of contenders next year.
Securing a future first-rounder in a three-way trade is a risky endeavour anyway because you are in the lap of the gods about your rival’s ladder position and where that pick eventually lands.
Trading your best player to a direct rival then trying to death-ride them because you have their future first-rounder usually ends up a fool’s errand.
Adding Curnow to Geelong’s forward line doesn’t make the Cats invincible but it would pair together two players who have three of the AFL’s last four Coleman Medals.
Geelong split its two finals games against Brisbane but in both games Shannon Neale was given a fearful hiding by Harris Andrews.
Curnow doesn’t have a defining finals moment yet but try stopping a team with Cameron doing as he pleases, with the athletic Neale roaming further afield without a Harris Andrews-style match-up.
And with Curnow hopefully fully fit and thriving under Geelong’s work-life balance as Bailey Smith did in his first year at the Cats.
Ditto for Essendon if they secured Hawthorn’s current pick 9 as well as a 2026 first-rounder.
A team that made a semi-final last year and a preliminary final this year would inject a scintillating ball user with elite defence who has won five of the past seven Crichton Medals (and six of the past 10).
Football gods willing, we will see Will Day at full strength, Calsher Dear fully fit in his third season, Josh Weddle emerging as Kouta 2.0 and Cam Mackenzie realising his potential.
Consider Essendon languishing in the bottom four without Merrett while watching him dominate and their draft pick (the Hawks future first) drifting closer to pick 20.
NBA teams sometimes refuse to trade a star to a team in their own conference because it will only make it harder for them to make the playoffs.
The NBA also allows teams to trade picks with protections.
Under NBA rules around protected picks a club might trade a future first-rounder but if it falls into the highly prized 1-10 range the club retains it.
The protection means the traded pick can either shift to a second-round pick or be pushed back to the following year, as agreed by both parties.
Carlton might be happier to accept a Curnow trade if it believed one of those selections would fall between picks 8-12 but AFL rules – and Geelong’s stunning consistency – means it is less likely.
Geelong traded a future first-rounder to Richmond for the rights to secure draftee Max Holmes in the 2020 national draft, peeled off 16 home-and-away wins in 2021 and lost a prelim to Melbourne.
Richmond eventually picked at 17 in that 2021 draft and would feel their selection in athletic defender Tom Brown will play 200 AFL games at Punt Road.
Richmond wasn’t necessarily going to pick bolter Holmes if it retained the 2020 draft pick anyway and still got a quality player with the Cats pick.
But in securing that Geelong future first-round pick Richmond had to know it couldn’t count on landing early.
The positive for Geelong is that new draft changes mean it will be hard for clubs matching academy or father-son picks to secure players and then still have another first-round pick.
Previously it was easy enough to get up the draft order before any potential bid to take an early selection then match the bid on a linked player with the points gained from a cluster of back-end picks.
It meant Geelong’s pick 17 might easily have pushed out to 25 or 26 by the time free agency compensation and matched bids diluted it with rival clubs taking multiple players before the Cats took a selection.
From this year on it is so hard to amass points under changes to the draft value index that Geelong will hope its 2025 and 2026 picks remain within the draft’s top 20-22 picks.
The 2027 draft, where the Devils secure seven of the top 13 picks but must trade four of them, will clearly be a write-off for some clubs.
So as Hawthorn begins to mount its one concerted bid for Merrett and Geelong’s historic offer of three first-rounders stands, we wait for Carlton and Essendon to blink.
They will crunch the numbers taking into account so many factors with the most obvious that they are handing their rivals a possible premiership that would diminish the draft hand they receive on Wednesday night.
Originally published as Death-riding a rival after trading with them, it’s a dangerous game even without handing over superstars
Port ‘prepared’ to poach AFL’s $2m man
