Not a level paying field: The problem the Bowes trade reveals

If Jack Bowes is traded to Geelong, with the Cats also gaining the prized pick seven in the national draft, the deal will represent a worrisome watershed in the competition’s history.

Geelong won the premiership and have missed the finals once in 16 seasons. The Suns are yet to make the finals in their dozen, largely dismal years of existence.

Gold Coast midfielder Jack Bowes.Credit: Getty Images

The draft and salary cap are socialised measures designed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, invented to lift lowly teams up and undercutting, if not levelling, empires such as Geelong’s.

Yet, it is the premiers who have the room to take Gold Coast’s salary dump and acquire Bowes, who, whether he chooses Geelong, Hawthorn or Essendon, is less enticing to those clubs than the high draft pick that is attached to him, in a buy-one-get-one-free deal. That said, Bowes may prove an excellent bargain like Will Brodie at Fremantle.

Fans of other clubs will be watching Gold Coast’s Bowes sale and wondering how the heck the Suns have ended up offloading a former top 10 draft choice - an academy player from Queensland, who clubs rated highly - and giving up a draft pick that is of considerable value.

To gain Bowes and pick seven, the vendor must also pick up his contract, which amounts to more than $1.5 million over the next two years. He comes with a major string attached, since many clubs can’t afford to take on a player who hasn’t been in the Gold Coast’s starting midfield on that kind of money (even if you re-negotiate it down).

It is remarkable that Geelong, despite an unmatched run of success since Joel Selwood’s arrival in 2006, can take on the excessive Bowes contract (which resulted from the Suns pushing money back, Bowes was not paid at that level annually). It is less surprising that Hawthorn and Essendon can accommodate Bowes, given their recent ladder positions.

What should concern the AFL and what the Bowes deal lays bare is that expansion teams are nowhere near parity if they have to compete with the same set of rules as Geelong, Essendon, Hawthorn, Richmond, Collingwood, West Coast and so forth.

Greater Western Sydney operates under the same grim circumstances, or worse, than the Gold Coast, in that they have been forced to pay close to a million dollars a season for four players - Stephen Coniglio, Josh Kelly, Lachie Whitfield and Toby Greene - and for terms of at least six years. The player they could least afford to lose, Jeremy Cameron, joined the Cats for a lower price than he was paid at GWS.

The Giants and Suns are caught in a cycle of losing players, whom they have little choice but to overpay based on their high draft position; hence, the Giants are giving up Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper (albeit they have too many inside mids) rather than Coniglio or another older player on a hefty contract.

Tim Taranto.Credit: Phil Hillyard.

The Suns are making this radical step of the salary dump for a high pick, in the knowledge that: a) Bowes is on the fringes of their best side; b) his back loaded deal means he’s on too much money; and c) they have to offer clubs something irresistible to get them to take on his contract. The AFL recently amended the rules to allow such dumps.

The Suns’ view is that the value of that salary-cap space is greater to them than the draft pick. This is a logic that applies only to the expansion teams. For the Swans and Lions have been established for long enough to retain players for closer to Melbourne market rates, even though Sydney (and GWS) lost their cost-of-living allowance in 2014 post the Buddy Franklin signing.

As a trade, Bowes will attract less media interest than Brodie Grundy or Luke Jackson’s moves. But it is far and away the most important trade for what it tells us about the AFL’s two-tiered competition.

Geelong, with their lower cost of living, local players (17 if Ollie Henry and Tanner Bruhn get there) and coastal/country lifestyle, are operating in an entirely different stratosphere to the expansion teams. Ditto, to a lesser extent, for the Melbourne clubs that are pursuing Bowes.

The AFL succeeded in equalising the competition on most measures, but where the 17th and 18th clubs are concerned, there isn’t a level paying field.

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