AFL wildcard weekend needed to keep season alive, draft assistance

Herald Sun

4 hours ago

Andrew Dillon is well aware the only concept the public hates more than draft assistance through priority picks is the annual discussion about a wildcard weekend.
But as the AFL's chief executives meet on the Gold Coast on Tuesday and Wednesday for a two-day gabfest, those two contentious ideas will intersect given this season's glaring concerns.
Talk to the punter in the street and they will tell you this year has been one-sided and downright boring.
The same clubs dominating as in recent years (Brisbane, Geelong, Collingwood) and too many one-sided, predictable encounters.
As recently as last year we had 13 teams competing late in the year for eight finals spots.
And this season we are likely to have four teams in the eight who were absent last year in Collingwood, Gold Coast, Adelaide and Fremantle.
A season that started in a blaze of glory with a series of epic blockbuster clashes had run out of puff by the five bye rounds which interrupted the season's momentum.
Just when it should be about to roar back to life, the season has lost its sting.
So as those CEOs assemble, Dillon's solutions to two connecting challenges will be interesting to assess.
The challenges are obvious.
How does the AFL keep interest in a season for longer in an era when Fox Footy and Seven have paid record sums for what looks like a series of dead rubbers in the last eight weeks?
Is the AFL prepared to actually get serious about an 8 v 9 wildcard weekend that keeps more teams relevant deeper into the season instead of just discussing it at the annual CEO's conferences?
And how can the league actually fix its draft and equalisation system to hasten the boom-bust cycle so rebuilding clubs don't spend a decade trying to work their way back up the top?
How do we incentivise teams bouncing hard from rebuilds to flourish like the Dogs in 2016 as they peeled off nine wins in the final 13 home-and-away games before peeling off four straight finals victories?
Or Richmond's Tiger Train winning the last nine games of 2014 to make finals with a three-point SCG victory over Sydney?
Both those teams banked draft picks through rebuilds but were able to come out the other side without running into a brick wall formed by free agency, academies and NGA talent.
The problem is easy to diagnose.
Sixteen years ago Mick Malthouse coined the term Blockbuster Fatigue to describe his club's inability to rise to the occasion after weeks of marquee contests.
The AFL is about to hit Dead Rubber Syndrome.
This week the top nine teams play the bottom nine teams.
Mathematically, 10th placed Port Adelaide is still in the race but in reality no chance given they are two wins behind Gold Coast, have a percentage of 84, and have played an extra game on the Suns.
Fox Footy's ratings are going gangbusters but a penny for the thought of Seven's executives with flagging ratings and a series of one-sided encounters in the eight rounds ahead.
Perhaps this year is no perfect example given Essendon is sinking under its weight of injuries, Melbourne is mediocre, Carlton is cast and Sydney leaving its run too late.
But clubs, players and the AFL have good reason to push for a wildcard weekend.
The players are sharing in the largess of a 37 per cent pay rise in the current 2023-2027 CBA deal but with TV rights locked in for seven more years it is hard to see where their next big pay rise comes when they start negotiating the next deal in the near future.
They need to do everything in their power to turbocharge the value of the TV rights, including state of origin and the wildcard round that would mean more teams are more relevant deeper into the season.
It isn't just the single wildcard contest, it is that in an 18-team competition more teams are alive until later in the season.
The yearning for tradition is a moot point given the repeated changes to the AFL's finals system since a top four in 1987.
The league had had three versions of the Argus system, a round-robin finals system with a challenge format, the Page McIntyre system, a top five (1972-1990), two versions of the top six (1991-1993), and two versions of the top eight since 1994.
Thirty years on in a new world order with the NRL a fierce competitor, it is a perfect time for the AFL to trial a wildcard weekend.
Fixing the equalisation system that is all but bust is another huge challenge but the AFL would do well to listen to Alastair Clarkson.
He is modern football's greatest coach but even he knows his club doesn't stand a chance when it comes to measures like free agency and the trade period.
A year after recent premiers Collingwood (Dan Houston, Harry Perryman) and Geelong (Bailey Smith) stocked up on star talent, the Lions will likely secure Oscar Allen as a free agent.
As Clarkson told ABC Radio on Saturday, his club just isn't on an equal playing field.
The league dodged a bullet when Matt Rowell decided against going to heavyweights Collingwood or Geelong last week, but none of the league's battlers were even in the picture.
As Clarkson said on Saturday: 'The mechanisms to get yourself up the ladder are as challenging as they have ever been'.
'At Hawthorn the first two drafts there was a priority pick involved. One was Jarryd Roughead and the other was Xavier Ellis and they were both premiership players for the club. Richmond, the Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn all reaped the benefits of that situation where they did try to give a leg up to clubs and all of those clubs won premierships in the next decade. But the system worked in terms of equalisation. Now there are other forms of equalistation.
'NGA academies, northern academies.and free agency and all of them have made it more difficult for teams down the bottom of the ladder to secure the talent they need.'
No one wants a return to the pre-draft priority pick but if the bottom three clubs received an extra mid-first-round or end-of-first-round pick it would help equalisation in a truly broken draft system.
North Melbourne is never in the hunt for quality free agents and in fact lost Ben McKay to free agency entering the peak of his career because his departure helped secure them a quality compensation pick.
'Players are getting paid well enough these days that more free agents are looking for success,' Clarkson said.
'They are clubs in the window of opportunity in the next one or two years and it's meant that the teams in the bottom six or eight on the ladder are not getting access to free agents which makes it even tougher to try to climb the ladder.'
The AFL is unlikely to bring about the return of the priority pick as Tasmania's introduction to the league approaches but Clarkson's point stands.
Brisbane and Geelong look to have five-year flag windows ahead, and the Roos are stuck down the bottom as usual.
The value in amassing quality draft picks is diluted when your rival can just add a Jeremy Cameron or Dan Houston because they are chasing flags.
Clubs down the bottom are forced to desperate measures.
West Coast has had to continually 'split' high draft picks to go back in the order to take multiple players in the top 20 given they are so far off.
St Kilda is having to throw stupid money at Tom De Koning while Bailey Smith plays down the highway for half of that sum.
North Melbourne got some draft assistance from the league and had to hand over quality picks for Griffin Logue and Darcy Tucker because no one else would come.
Heaven forbid to think what the Roos are having to pay Logue, Luke Parker, Zac Fisher, Callum Coleman-Jones and Aidan Corr combined while clubs with academy pipelines secure those players on mandated first and second-year wages.
The AFL is reviewing its academies and keeping open the prospect of tightening its bidding systems for father-son and academy talent.
It has broad enough club support for a wildcard weekend but doesn't need it anyway.
The coming months will gauge the AFL's appetite for change but after a month in which Dillon has stabilised the AFL's administration he should forge ahead with a wildcard weekend.
And at a very minimum make more tweaks to the draft bidding system so if clubs in the top eight do secure elite talent they pay a premium instead of a discount for the best kids in the land.