Chas from The Chasers idea to halt sides tanking

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Found this article on Real Footy by Chas Licciardello, member of The Chasers team. His solution to preventing tanking is probably the best that I have heard...

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How to scuttle tankers
Chas Licciardello | July 16, 2008

IT'S almost August. 'Tis the season for talkback radio to be swamped by two kinds of callers: angry Richmond fans and people with conspiracy theories about tankers — teams that throw games for better draft picks. No one can do much about Richmond, but there just might be a way to stop the tanking.

So far the impact of the priority pick system — which ensures a team "wins" first draft pick if it stays under 20 premiership points two years running (the Kreuzer rule) — has been as popular as the impact of Barry Hall's left fist.

But even if the league drops it, the system still encourages tanking for one reason: throwing the last few games can guarantee a team a particular draft pick.

In fact, losing at the end of the season may be the only way for a team to obtain a cheap high draft pick — apart from trading with Fremantle.

So how can the league remove this guarantee? Many believe it should hold an NBA-style draft lottery for the top draft picks — a proposal that simply won't work, no matter how much the AFL wants to turn the game into basketball.

In a 16-team competition there are only two ways of holding such a lottery: include so few teams (for example the bottom four) meaning you encourage other teams (e.g. fifth last) to tank for a shot at the top draft pick, or include so many (e.g. all of them) that you run the risk of a very good team snaring the top pick and a very bad team missing out on the first 10.

Much like a beauty competition between the Whitnall brothers, neither option is desirable.

There is another way. Let's call it the "Too Much Time On My Hands" method.

Draft picks 9-16 stay as they are. But to determine the order of the first eight draft picks, draw at random a round between 13 and 22. The order in that round of the eight teams that eventually miss the finals determines the reverse order of picks. So if round 14 is selected, the No. 1 draft pick goes to the non-finalist with the lowest ladder position in round 14, and the No. 8 pick goes to the non-finalist with the highest.

This simple tweak means that if a team still wants to tank its way to top pick, it has to do it from at least round 13 — that's a lot of weeks of sucking.

Here are a few case studies to illustrate this system's advantages.

At the end of 2006, Carlton was last on the ladder and faced a simple equation: lose in round 22 and be assured of top pick, or win and get second pick instead. Under my system the incentive to lose would not have been so clear: the team had been 15th — and headed for second pick — for five of the last 10 rounds, and 16th — entitled to top pick — for four as it went into the final round.

So tanking would have only boosted its chances of top pick from 40 % to 50 — a rather small reward for the damage potentially inflicted on the club's reputation and membership figures, not to mention team morale.

Although admittedly, it could never compare to the harm done by Kouta when he appeared in his lycra unitard on Gladiators.

In the same year, Hawthorn had limped to round 18 with just five wins but went on to win in the last four rounds. Had the team chosen to tank, it would have been rewarded with the No. 3 draft pick. Instead, the struggling but spirited group was punished with the No. 6 selection.

You'll just have to take my word for it that under my system Hawthorn would have had a 10% chance of getting fourth draft pick, 70% of third, 10% of fifth, and 10% of sixth — a much fairer result for a team that spent a lot of season 2006 in 14th position.

Last year the Bulldogs spent most of the year in the top eight before falling apart to lose six and draw one of their last seven games. They ended up with the No. 4 draft pick (ignoring Kreuzer).

My system would have given them only a 20% chance of such an outcome, a 10% chance of fifth pick, 30% of sixth, 10% of seventh and 30% of eighth.

This would seem like a much fairer result for a developed team that simply under-performed at the end of the season.

So this system does not punish end-of-season success or reward end-of-season failure nearly as much as the present system.

But it still ensures high draft picks go to struggling clubs, while retaining enough uncertainty to make "list management" a fairly tricky prospect. And since it's almost incomprehensible, at least the guys behind the AFL fixture should like it. If only I could find a way to make every footy fan detest it, I might just get it up.

Chas Licciardello is a member of the Chaser and the Bulldogs, and is relieved that at least one of those teams isn't filled with losers.