AFL draft news: How changes to bidding system will make clubs pay a fairer price for top talent

From next season, major changes to the draft will force clubs to pay a steeper price to match bids. JON RALPH unpacks what the Lions should be paying – and how they’re the last club to heist the draft.

The late, great Bud Tingwell argued in his famous High Court address in The Castle that the Kerrigans home needed to be acquired “on just terms”.

Tiriel Mora’s Denis Denuto hadn’t got it done with “the vibe” so Darryl Kerrigan called in the big guns on the way to Canberra.

No one begrudges any club securing father-son or academy picks.

The less said the better about Victorian clubs like Geelong who have established dynasties with fathers-sons like Matthew Scarlett, Gary Ablett and Tom Hawkins complaining about free agency compensation.

All clubs want are those teams paying a fair price.

They want them to pay on just terms.

The AFL should have pulled the trigger on changes to the bidding system and draft value index this year so the Lions paid a truer value for No. 1 draft prospect Levi Ashcroft and northern academy midfielder Sam Marshall.

Sam Marshall. Riley Lockett/AFL Photos via Getty Images.

Levi Ashcroft. Picture: Martin Keep/AFL Photos via Getty Images.

But using the Lions’ likely moves in the next week to secure those points compared to the 2025 changes is a very worthwhile exercise.

It shows how footy’s greatest rort will be at least minimised if not eradicated.

Most footy fans’ eyes glaze over when you talk about draft indexes and points values and back-end pick swaps but it is worth making the changes clear using a live example.

In essence they will stop clubs like Brisbane doing exactly what they are currently executing in coming years – using a heap of back-end picks they would never use to draft a pair of top-20 talents.

Brisbane plans to trade pick 20 for four later Richmond picks to accumulate enough draft points to match bids for Ashcroft and Marshall.

A reminder – they don’t need to have the next pick to match a rival bid, they just need to give up the points value of the pick which their rival offers when they bid on the player.

This year every draft pick is assigned a points value – from 3000 for pick 1 to nine points for pick 73.

This year Brisbane will offer pick 20 (worth 912 points) for Richmond’s pick 32, 42, 43 and 45 (worth 1704 points).

So they pretty much double the value of pick 20 because it gives Richmond a quality pick in a great draft.

For argument’s sake, let’s say they have to match bids in the November national draft for Ashcroft at pick 1 and Marshall at pick 20.

Under this year’s rules they get a 20 per cent discount when they match a bid.

So they only need to find 2400 points for Ashcroft (down from 3000 points) and 729 points for Marshall (down from 912 points).

So Brisbane would only need to trade out a Dev Robertson or find another mid-range pick to accumulate a few more points, and Ashcroft and Marshall are theirs on draft night.

Next year under the DVI (draft value index) the league has stripped 10,000 points from the system so the value of picks drops off a cliff after the first round, with no points for any picks after No. 54.

Clubs also only get a 10 per cent discount (reduced from 20 per cent) when they match bids from picks 1-18, then an 84 point discount when they match bids after pick 18.

So if Brisbane tried to trade pick 20 it would only be worth 757 points anyway and Richmond’s picks (32, 42, 43, 45) would be worth a paltry 941 points compared to this year’s 1704 points.

The Lions would need to find 2700 points for the Ashcroft equivalent and 673 points for the Marshall equivalent.

But even if they got a sweetheart deal using pick 20, they would accumulate only 757 points for those four Richmond picks and they would need to find a total of 3373 points for Ashcroft and Marshall.

On the DVI, picks five (1795) and seven (1543) next year would be worth 3338 points.

Good luck trying to trade into picks five and seven.

They would still have their first-rounder but they might need to trade out someone like a Cam Rayner or Keidean Coleman to find enough points.

So clubs with multiple academy or father-son picks will need to find a ridiculous amount of points if they want to match bids.

They might decide to overlook some of those players, which would put them back into the overall pool.

As it turns out clubs will surely allow Ashcroft past the first handful of picks so it will get even easier this year for the Lions to nail their strategy.

Only next year will we find out if the AFL has gone hard enough on the DVI changes given clubs will find more legal rorts to game the system.

But at least Collingwood (Tom McGuane), Sydney (Lachie Carmichael, Noah Chamberlain) and Brisbane (Daniel Annable) will creep closer to paying on just terms for their future stars in 2025.