Wreck It Ralph: How Essendon and St Kilda can work together to pull off a trade-free agency heist
As the AFL trade period heats up, St Kilda and Essendon have considered a trade-free agency heist never seen before. Here is how it could work.
How do you create a first-round draft pick out of thin air?
By using over 100 years of accumulated football wisdom to take advantage of AFL rules that have always had loopholes big enough to drive a bus through.
As an AFL trade period potentially short on massive names hots up, St Kilda and Essendon have at least considered the kind of trade-free agency heist never pulled off in the league before.
Both clubs are tight-lipped on the details but one way a deal could be orchestrated – sending Jade Gresham to Essendon and Dylan Shiel to St Kilda – would be a masterful arrangement benefiting both parties.
It would make use of the fact free agency compensation is a ridiculous concept open to manipulation.
Here are the bare bones of what rival recruiters suspect St Kilda recruiters Graeme Allan and Stephen Silvagni might be cooking up with Essendon’s Adrian Dodoro.
St Kilda wants to stiffen its midfield and is very prepared to let go of mid-forward Jade Gresham so believes Dylan Shiel is a person of interest.
Essendon already has eight quality mids (Zach Merrett, Darcy Parish, Jake Stringer, Nic Martin, Jye Caldwell, Will Setterfield, Archie Perkins, Nik Cox) and needs some cap space relief as it considers a free agency triple play of Gresham, Ben McKay and Todd Goldstein.
So Essendon ensures the salary it pays for Gresham is enough to provide St Kilda with either first-round or end-of-first-round free agency compensation.
Given Gresham is already well-paid – above $600,000 a season – the free agency premium to move clubs is significant and the CBA is going up 31 per cent.
So there is nothing to stop them paying him $750,000 a year in a free agency period where McKay will get similar rates despite being injury-prone and inconsistent.
St Kilda gets a first-round pick (selection 13) or end-of-first-round (pick 19) as free agency compensation for Gresham.
Then a week later in the trade period they hand that pick or something close to it back to Essendon for Dylan Shiel.
Why would Essendon do that deal?
Because Essendon effectively turns Shiel, 31 in March, into 25-year-old Ben McKay, and finds the salary cap room to pay the fullback they so desperately need.
Not only that, but they get a quality draft pick for Shiel (either first-round or end-of-first-round).
They also get Gresham as a bargain, who isn’t the steak knives element of the deal but has upside as a 26-year-old that could make a solid contribution.
St Kilda loses a player it didn’t really want in Gresham – he has averaged less than a goal a game across every one of his eight seasons except 2017 and 2018.
They lose Gresham’s salary commitment.
And in essence they turn a flighty half forward in Gresham into Shiel, a hard-running explosive midfielder who was ranked in the top 10 mids in the comp in round nine before a procession of niggling injuries.
At 30 he might be the perfect bridging midfielder to help Jack Steele and Brad Crouch given Nasiah Wanganeen-Mileaa, Mattaes Phillipou and Mitch Owens are all brilliant talents but perhaps not pure inside mids yet.
A Shiel move is definitely on the cards - he is aware of the interest - but St Kilda and Essendon would both have to tell the AFL the deals were entirely separate.
That Gresham was being paid fair value and Essendon was taking advantage of the league’s new rules allowing more flexibility on cap dumps to get Shiel off their books.
St Kilda and Adelaide contemplated something similar when Brad Crouch moved to the Saints in 2020.
There was speculation Luke Dunston might be traded back to the Crows as cap relief if the Saints paid up for a free agency deal that would have handed Adelaide a top-10 pick.
But the Saints were never close to committing the $800,000 per season it would have taken to activate first-round compensation.
Instead they paid a salary which triggered second-round compo - two bands lower.
Gresham’s market value is much closer to $750,000 than Crouch was, especially since Crouch was coming off an illicit drugs strike for cocaine use.
So there are clearly impediments for the Dons and St Kilda to overcome if they do attempt a deal.
You have to give clubs credit for trying, with this scheme only the latest extension of clever exploitation of the AFL’s rules.
We have seen Geelong capitalising on the Suns’ Jack Bowes salary dump last year, then immediately turning his two-year $1.6 million contract into a four-year deal they could fit into the cap.
We have seen Hawthorn attempting to drag Jai Newcombe through the 2021 mid-season draft as their second selection with a 30-month deal of $170,000 a season until the attention forced them to use their first pick.
We have seen clubs driving up contracts on Gold Coast teens with strong offers, then dragging them out anyway (Will Brodie, Jack Scrimshaw), sometimes with the Suns paying part of their wage bill.
We have seen Sydney using the trading of live picks in 2018 to trade out their draft selection, then match a bid on Nick Blakey, then trade back into the draft to preserve a second-round pick.
Clubs are asked by the AFL when lodging trades if the deal is linked to another impending trade.
But free agency starts on Friday week — separate to the trade period — and Essendon can pay Gresham whatever they want.
The AFL can’t intervene to tell clubs they are over-paying talent, otherwise the Jared Polec to North Melbourne deal or so many other disastrous trades wouldn’t have happened.
And how can the AFL tell St Kilda that Shiel is not exactly what they need given Ross Lyon has spent the year talking about adding A-grade class to his onball unit then lost a final to a deeper, more talented midfield.
So we will wait and see what these clubs are cooking and whether a deal along these lines comes to pass.
Once upon a time clubs blatantly broke rules and cheated the salary cap to gain an advantage on their rivals.
Now they must scheme and plot and take advantage of the league’s loopholes within the rules, which would make a piece of scally-waggerery like this even more satisfying to pull off.
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