by DOC » Mon Jun 03, 2019 3:19 am
By Andrew Faulkner in the Austtralian
On Monday we’ll be reminded that the AFL is the VFL with the V turned upside down and furnished with a small ornamental crossbar.
Those of us in the states that are not Victoria will be put in our place. Again.
For the V, pardon, A-FL, is coming for your players.
For your star ruckman. Your centreman. Your centre-half-forward. The player your local club has groomed and nurtured and fostered. The player recruited with scarce money, only to be stolen mid-season, cruelling finals aspirations and breaking supporters’ hearts.
Stolen is not too harsh a word, because the local clubs get nothing in return.
The mid-season draft is open season on local football. About 15 players are expected to be selected on Monday in the first mid-season draft since 1993.
AFL talent ambassador Kevin Sheehan said on Melbourne radio this week losing a player mid-season was great for a local club’s “culture”.
“(It is) a little minor setback that you might lose one, but great for the culture of that club to be pushing your boys up to give them a chance,” Sheehan said.
Where to begin. Firstly, clubs such as Norwood, Glenelg, Claremont and Swan Districts aren’t lacking in the culture department. They could teach a few AFL franchises a thing or two about culture. But won’t someone think of the kiddies? All they ask is a chance!
Well, state clubs are proud when their players are drafted — in the draft proper. But not in the middle of the season.
South Adelaide expect to lose the SANFL’s leading ruckman, Michael Knoll. This, after South lost forward/ruckman Hayden McLean to Sydney as a “supplementary” recruit in March. And that, after they lost ruckman Keegan Brooksby, to West Coast as a “Pre-Season Supplemental Selection”.
As you can imagine, South Adelaide’s inventory of tall timber is starting to look a tad thin.
South fans shuffle their feet, hands in pockets, and mumble something about that just being the way of the world. Because South people are used to hardship. They haven’t won a premiership since 1964.
But there’s plenty to speak for them, such as ex-Port captain Warren Tredrea, who says the mid-season draft threatens the fabric of the WAFL, SANFL and even the VFL.
“Once again, the AFL has misread the room and got it terribly wrong,” Tredrea wrote in The Advertiser this week.
Norwood chief executive and former Western Bulldogs football manager James Fantasia says the AFL has acted in haste.
“This will have little or no impact on the AFL clubs … but the impact on the SANFL is enormous,” Fantasia says.
Fantasia said the jump from the second to the top tier was too big a leap for a player during a season. “To suggest that you can play a player from a state league, that he’s going to walk into an AFL side that same year, that’s pie in the sky stuff.”
Inaugural Adelaide coach Graham Cornes says AFL clubs are announcing “strategic retirements” so they can “ravage local leagues” on Monday.
“It should never have come to this,” Cornes wrote in The Advertiser. “In typical AFL fashion it has determined an outcome before considering the process or the impact.”
If the AFL needs more players, then expand the lists. And do it via the November draft, so everyone’s on a level playing field.
Again, local clubs are delighted when their players are taken in the draft proper.
My own club — and let that stand as a declaration of interest from a Sturt member — presently has 17 players on AFL lists. A full starting side bar one.
It’s not enough that the Double Blues gave the game attacking handball, Peter Motley and the widespread use of the checkside punt — oh, and a ruckman by the name of Brodie Grundy — we have to hand over more players in the middle of the season? What have you done with the others?
If all this isn’t bad enough, AFL clubs have admitted they won’t use the mid-season draft for its intended purpose; that is, recruiting a mature player to fill a gap created by an injury or a retirement. Instead clubs will take youngsters not yet ready for AFL, and develop them over more than the current season.
There are voices of dissent. Chris Scott, for example, is opposed to AFL clubs warehousing young players overlooked in the draft.
“I don’t think that was the intention, and it looks like that’s the way it might be used,” Scott told AFL 360 this week. “Stephen Wells, who I have an enormous amount of respect for, our list manager and recruiting manager, has been opposed to the idea for a long time on the basis that the art of list management is getting your team ready for the whole season.”