Wreck It Ralph: Can the AFL fix its broken draft system as St Kilda academy prospect who got away highlights NGA program failings
The AFL will this year hold the most compromised draft in its history and the problem is only going to get worse. Jon Ralph looks at the real issues and the potential solutions.
AFL
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Twenty-three years after Carl Steinfort successfully tagged Des Headland in the 2002 grand final – then was swiftly retired by Mick Malthouse – son Tom shapes as an unlikely battleground in the fight over the AFL’s talent pathways.
Yet as heartland clubs fight against the wave of northern academy talent while simultaneously protecting their own turf, Tom is rising up future draft boards.
He is highly rated after representing Vic Country in the recent Under-16 carnival and yet a player who could have been tied to St Kilda’s academy is officially a Geelong NGA player.
Father Carl played 65 games for the Cats then 27 for Collingwood before retiring in 2002.
His three sons are not father-son eligible but the chartered accountant married Finnish wife Tuuli when travelling abroad so Tom, Olli and Oskar are eligible for Geelong’s NGA academy because at least one parent was born overseas.
Yet Tom’s move from St Kilda’s zone with the South Melbourne Districts Football Club to Geelong Grammar has seen Geelong snap him up before he hits 16 years of age to officially tie him to their academy.
If a player never signed by St Kilda blossoms into a future star by draft age, the Cats can add him to their litany of father-son guns by matching any rival bid.
Despite him starting his footy career in a rival zone.
With a father who is a former AFL regular.
With the virtual certainty that he would have made the progression as an AFL aspirant without Geelong’s development.
But herein lies the rub.
Not even Geelong is supportive of an NGA system that could be scrapped altogether in coming months or have its parameters tightened under an official AFL review.
Clubs believe the AFL Commission will consider changes at its August meeting after a comprehensive review of the academy system.
The review headed by AFL executive Rob Auld could make its findings in time for an August commission meeting.
Auld has made clear to interested observers that he isn’t ruling out anything just yet.
Northern academies are not seen to be at risk but the bidding system under which the Suns and Lions will secure top-five talents this year could be tightened again for November’s draft.
So too could eligibility for these NGA talents, who can be signed up between the ages of 11 and 15 if they come from multicultural or Indigenous backgrounds.
The league’s rationale is that by encouraging clubs to invest in designated zones, the reward is being allowed to bid on them come draft night.
Yet as identities from Victorian power clubs including Geelong, Richmond and Essendon have told the AFL, the league should scrap the NGA system altogether apart from allowing clubs to foster Indigenous talent.
A system set up so clubs would invest money into kids from multicultural and Indigenous backgrounds is instead open to manipulation.
Or at the very least to ridiculous rulings, with ex-Crow James Borlase at the top of the heap.
Father Darryl is a Port Adelaide legend and mum Jenny is a former Australian netball star, but because he was born in Egypt while his father was working as a commodity trader he was academy-linked to the Crows.
What was once an open draft apart from the occasional father-son prospect is now yet another compromised system that robs the league of a key equalisation measure.
As one list veteran said this week: “It’s Manipulation 101. We are about to have the most compromised draft in history and it’s only about to get worse. We will get to the stage where we might as well not have draft night. Everyone is going to know where they are already going.”
AFL great Gerard Healy has labelled the NGA system as “without question one of the dumbest, most ill-considered changes to the recruitment pathways we’ve seen in 30 years”.
So what is the real issue and what are the solutions?
Clubs believe the league’s desperation to introduce multicultural talent has meant far too many players are allowed to be listed as NGA talent (which are separate to the four northern states academies).
The most recent census shows that 31.5 per cent of the population was born overseas.
So in theory a third of the draft crop can be NGA linked to various clubs.
The league trumpets its equalisation measures – the football department soft cap, the national draft and the salary cap.
Yet with free agency, summer rookies, the mid-season draft, delisted free agents and so many other list management mechanisms, the power clubs like Geelong and Collingwood remain dominant.
Bastardising the draft with yet more compromises like multiple NGA selections only makes it harder for rebuilding clubs to bounce up the ladder or shorten the boom-bust cycle.
Even the poster boy for NGA academies – the first player of Iraqi heritage in Isaac Kako – would have made the grade if he wasn’t in the Essendon NGA academy.
He went to Parade College, played junior footy for the Northern Saints and Pascoe Vale, progressed to the Calder Cannons and was a Vic Metro Under-16 rep.
He said all the right things about Essendon’s support for him through his teenage years when he was drafted, but he would have found a way to the AFL anyway.
So too would No. 1 overall pick Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and Demons academy player Mac Andrew, who began playing footy at Under-9s and wasn’t available to the Demons given limits that year on matching NGA bids.
A quirky note for the Dons – their academy takes in the inner northern suburbs with Adam Sweid and Huss El Achkar likely to join Kako on the list next year.
But El Achkar is 171cm and Sweid 175cm, both shorter than the 176cm Kako.
Essendon’s zone in the inner north has a large proportion of kids from Middle Eastern backgrounds - dashing ball winners and goal sneaks but of shorter stature.
Geelong has NGA access to Greg Mellor’s son Jesse this national draft as he rises up draft boards as a midfielder.
But while he is eligible because his mother was born overseas, Jesse hasn’t set foot off the traditional pathway.
Dad Greg is a long-time Geelong league coach who was also a Richmond assistant and former West Adelaide star.
Jesse Mellor doesn’t need a leg-up with an academy link to make the grade.
So Geelong will gladly accept him into their academy while realising there is no way that qualification should be so loose.
Collingwood has potential first-rounder Zac McCarthy as an 198cm key tall and academy player because his mother is Vietnam-born.
Small forward Jai Saxena is also NGA-linked to the Pies (his father is from Delhi).
Both have long been in the Pies academy and father-son program, staffed by Steve Grace and Lynden Dunn and overseen by Justin Leppitsch.
But even as late bloomers they had pathways through Oakleigh’s Coates League side if not for their affiliation with the Collingwood academy.
There are many solutions the AFL could turn to.
They could reduce the age qualification from 15 to 14 or even much younger to encourage clubs to go and find multicultural talent instead of simply skimming the pool when they realise 15 year old kids have an overseas born parent.
They could ensure clubs are only allowed to bid on one academy or father-son each draft crop to ensure the pool is not overly diluted.
So the Suns or Pies might have to choose only one player this year, but they would argue why work hard to build depth in their academy when they could only take a single player.
The AFL could scrap the NGA system entirely and go back to funding the AFL’s own academies which find young Sudanese, Iraqi or overseas-born talents then allow them to be drafted like in recent seasons.
Some Victorian recruiters believe that is the way forward for a truly national competition.
That it is the AFL’s responsibility to fund national academies which would secure the former rugby juniors from Queensland, the indigenous kids from Darwin or remote WA.
They argue that if Gold Coast is paying $2 million a year to fund its own academy (which also has its own sponsorship) that money has predominantly come from the AFL’s distribution.
Why doesn’t the AFL use that money to fund academies that feed into the draft pool, not strengthen Queensland clubs.
Gold Coast’s defence is that it doesn’t have free agents, it has huge retention challenges (think Matt Rowell), that it flies across the country every second week and that it loses on every other competitive balance measure.
So if the playing field was equalised on every other front, it would give up the one advantage it had.
What would help the academy system’s terrible PR is a more equitable bidding method.
Clubs this year get a 10 per cent discount when they match a bid, with the DVI (draft value index) dropping away more quickly so clubs can’t stockpile later picks to draft top-ten talent.
In some club submissions to the AFL, clubs have suggested it should be an extra 10 per cent premium if you want to secure a father-son or academy talent.
They argue clubs rarely have to match the true value of a player because rival clubs let academy or father-son talent slide as they did with Nick Daicos and Levi Ashcroft.
And they believe there is a considerable advantage of knowing what kind of father-son or academy player is coming down the pipeline.
Collingwood could recruit two defenders (Dan Houston and mid-back Harry Perryman) last year knowing father-son mid Tom McGuane was arriving.
Brisbane can try to secure a free agent forward in Oscar Allen certain that it will acquire star midfielder Dan Annable as a top-five draft prospect.
Brisbane and Gold Coast are adamant it will be more challenging to match bids for their top five selections – Suns defender Zeke Uwland and Annable.
With as many as eight clubs trying to secure points for their NGA, academy and father-son selections, the race to stockpile picks will be much more intense.
Richmond last year gave up a stack of back-end picks to Brisbane, but this year it will need quality selections to match father-son selection Louis Kellaway, father of Duncan.
Gold Coast argues it only has three first-round picks to match bids for its welter of academy players because it traded out former pick two Jack Lukosius last year.
One list management staffer assessing the draft board recently was dismissive of a mid-ranked talent who was unlikely to be a game-changer for the club that drafted him.
He was shocked to be told that player might be the fifth live pick on draft night given the welter of father-son, NGA and academy picks in the draft.
The AFL is desperate to make the game look more like the multicultural and diverse population that follows this code.
But in doing so it cannot destroy the draft as an equalisation measure.
Can the AFL find a way to arrest 19-year low Indigenous numbers and secure a pathway for the Sudanese kids who are taking this game by storm without wrecking the draft?
And yet still allow traditions like the father-son rule to continue?
It is the AFL’s next great challenge under Andrew Dillon, as clubs await with bated breath review findings that will chart the direction for the next breed of young kids in talent pathways.
Originally published as Wreck It Ralph: Can the AFL fix its broken draft system as St Kilda academy prospect who got away highlights NGA program failings
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