Integrity of the AFL draft is continually eroded | Graham Cornes

Collingwood’s premiership was a triumph for their list management team but a condemnation of the system, writes Graham Cornes.

The silly season of draft week is upon us and more so than the national draft, this trade period may be the most important recruiting week of the year for some clubs. Premierships may hinge on it.

Unfortunately, history tells us the two South Australian team have a much harder task attracting elite talent.

Their best chances are to bring ex-South Australians home.

Jason Horne-Francis, Izaak Rankine and Jordan Dawson are the best examples of that but so many more choose to stay interstate.

Keeping them once you’ve got them seems a little hard as well – especially for the Crows. Tom Doedee walked this week – all the way from West Lakes to Brisbane.

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He’s a free agent and Brisbane offered him a longer deal with more money.

I can’t blame him for going but I can understand Adelaide’s hesitation to match the offer. After two knee reconstructions and his indifferent form of recent times, Adelaide’s seems the more responsible list management. So, another grand finalist lures a player away from a team that finished outside the eight.

Two of the AFL’s pillars of equitable competition are the draft and the salary cap.

The principle behind them is that every team eventually will have an opportunity to win the flag.

The team at the bottom must eventually rise.

So much for that principle because in 2023 the system has never been more unequal.

The draft and the salary cap are continually compromised.

We have free agency. We have a father/son system which for so long favoured the Victorian clubs. Clubs are allowed to pay part of a player’s salary to another club if they decide to move him on.

Clubs can exchange draft picks, not only for the current draft but for future drafts.

The system is further compromised by a ridiculously complicated points system which is attached to every draft pick.

Tom Doedee. Picture: Dylan Burns/AFL Photos

Then there is an academy program that allows clubs to nurture and have access to junior talent in their allotted region, thus evading the draft. This has been most beneficial to the clubs in the northern states.

Did I mention another academy, the next generation academy program which is designed to introduce players from different ethnic backgrounds to the game?

And we can’t forget the Irish rookie preselection.

To further contaminate the draft, if your team is really bad, you may be given some extra compensation picks – as North Melbourne was prior to this year’s draft. So it goes on.

The overall draft system is ridiculously complicated.

Worse, the integrity of the very system it is supposed to maintain and protect is continually eroded.

Trade week is upon us yet should anyone even mention the words “restraint of trade”, the AFL is prepared to take any challenge to the highest court in the land.

Amid this tangled web of rules and regulations, one thing is glaringly obvious. The most successful teams of the current era are those that have been able to manipulate the draft and the salary cap to win premierships.

Premierships are won by the players you can attract and trade into your club rather than the players you draft.

In Collingwood’s 2023 premiership team there were nine players – Hill, Crisp, Mitchell, Cameron, Hoskin-Elliot, Frampton, Howe, Lipinski and Markov – who had been traded from other clubs. Additionally, Taylor Adams and Daniel McStay who would have played if not for injury, were also taken from other clubs.

More specifically three of those players, Bobby Hill (who won it), Jack Crisp and Tom Mitchell all received votes in the Norm Smith Medal.

Collingwood would not have won the premiership without them.

Bobby Hill of the Magpies celebrates a goal during the Grand Final. Picture: Daniel Pockett/AFL Photos

It was a triumph for their list management team but a condemnation of the system.

A Port Adelaide fan texted me last week pointing out that of the last 17 premierships since 2004, 15 have been won by Victorian teams.

Now this may be a simple aberration or manipulation of the timeline but it is obvious the Victorian-based clubs have an enormous advantage when they embark on the recruiting raids which so determine premiership outcomes.

Most obvious is that because the majority of players are drafted from Victoria, it’s easier to entice them home.

The teams who play their home games at the MCG are particularly attractive.

Playing most of your games at the home of football? Who wouldn’t want to do that? Collingwood is particularly desirable as a destination. Why would a footballer in his prime not want to play for Collingwood?

The club’s headquarters are right next to the MCG.

It’s the most famous sporting club in the country; you get to play in all of the marqué matches at the best times of the week.

And you play in front of the biggest crowds in the world. (Statistics released this week showed that of all the world’s high-profile sporting clubs, Collingwood played in front of the second largest average crowd. Only Borussia Dortmund in Germany’s Bundesliga attracted a bigger average crowd, (81,228).

Marketing, sponsorship and commercial opportunities are also greater in the bigger city.

Of course it’s not only Collingwood.

Last year’s premiers, Geelong, had six players traded from other clubs and that’s excluding Tyson Stengle, who the Crows had delisted.

Of more concern is the fact that two of those players, Patrick Dangerfield and Jeremey Cameron are generational players, among the best in the competition.

If the basic principles of the draft and salary cap are so important, why are some of the best players in the competition able to walk out of teams in the bottom half of the table and go to a premiership contender.

Melbourne exploited the trade system to build its premiership team as well.

Steven May and Jake Lever, its two key defenders who are so vital in good teams, were recruited from other clubs. Melbourne’s key forward in their premiership was Ben Brown who was originally at North Melbourne.

Again, if the draft and salary cap is vital in ensuring equity, how can a key forward in his football prime be allowed to move from a cellar-dweller to a premiership contender.

The list goes on.

Hawthorn did the same when its team won three flags in a row.

Even Richmond, who we like to think of as a genuine homegrown team built from the ground up before it embarked on its three-time premiership winning run, had six players who began their careers at other clubs in its 2017 triumph.

So how, when they were the reigning premier, were they allowed to recruit Tom Lynch, a two-time club champion at the Gold Coast Suns.

The rich get rich and the poor get poorer. The AFL draft system should be a model of socialism but capitalism reigns supreme and is celebrated.

However, there is some honour in all of those examples. For a greater good, the Geelong players sacrificed any outrageous demands in their salary requests to ensure that they had room in the salary cap to accommodate all those stars they recruited. The 2022 premiership would be their reward. What price a premiership medallion?

If the AFL is serious about an equitable competition in which every team has an equal chance to improve and win a premiership, it needs to either get back to, and enforce the basic principles of the draft and salary cap, or reintroduce club zones.

Somehow though, I don’t think they are the slightest bit interested. The big Victorian teams are the ones that bring the crowds and the revenue. It won’t restrict their ability to plunder the other clubs – particularly the interstate ones.

Originally published as Integrity of the AFL draft is continually eroded | Graham Cornes