Less is more when it comes to AFL crafts

Those who regularly read my articles here on The Roar may have already understood that I am a little bit keen on this period of the trading period

What can I say? It's like my Christmas. Even if you probably think "it's too early to talk about the trading period of 2018," buddy, I'm already thinking of 2019 (have you seen how many players the Giants are out of contract at the time? ?). [19659003Howeveritcanbearguedthatthereisagreatdealofmiseryintheplacementofplayers

There have been notable changes over the last few years in the trade-period landscape and it seems that there will be others in the near future.

We have recently seen the introduction of the possibility of On the Horizon, it looks like a period of mid-season trading and live trading up to and during the pulling of ############################################################################ Water are things that could be introduced into the market. In 2018, we are still waiting for the AFL to confirm the dates of this year's exchange period and pre-project, presumably because the potential introduction of new rules and regulations new mechanics is still in the air.

We know that these changes have occurred for some time, while AFL CEO, Gillon McLachlan, was strongly supporting them in the podcast Road to the Draft last year (a highly recommended listening if you are not already there.)

Justification? According to McLachlan, he wants to accelerate the pace at which clubs are able to rebuild their lists by putting more "leverage" into the system.

"A broader ambition that I would like to have is whether you are McLachlan said," The tools that mean that if you are really smart and well managed, you can make a lot of change and have more of weight – that's "

In McLachlan's opinion, this equates to a simple: more players change clubs.

"People talk about loyalty and all these challenges of free will. The players are incredibly loyal, which is good. We come to the end of the trading period and people lament the lack of trades and player movements, "said McLachlan.

" If anything, I think there must be more moves of players. If you really want clubs that are well managed to climb faster, then the freer movement of players contributes to that.

"I think there is an opportunity for a bigger movement of players."

The landscape to allow clubs to rebuild faster is indeed a noble, Gillon – but it just will not work.

Why? As a watchful observer of the AFL trading period, it is because the vast majority of player movements are moving in one or the other direction.

The first is a high level player.

The second is that of lower level players who are moving in the opposite direction, usually because they are struggling to get a game where they are currently.

There are of course some exceptions, some of them quite notable. At times, individuals have unique reasons to want to move clubs, such as Dayne Beams's decision to request an exchange in Brisbane in 2014.

However, the vast majority of player movements each year could be attributed to the fact that they are not the same. one of these two categories. 19659003] Consider for example Tom J Lynch – right now he is playing for the second worst club in the league, and will certainly leave them to join one of Richmond, Collingwood or Hawthorn.

These are the three largest Victorian clubs in the league, measured by the size of the squad, have won five of the last eight positions of prime minister (probably six of the last nine soon)

There is no There is simply not enough money in the salary cap to create a third. Trade direction where players regularly leave the best clubs for poor clubs because the agreement is too good to say no.

Let me take you back to 2016 when, in the NBA, the Australian free agent Matthew Dellavedova left the Cleveland C swallowers (coming out of a championship season) to sign with the Milwaukee Bucks ( 12th in the Eastern Conference with a record of 33-49 that year).

Why would a player make a move like this? Quite simple, Delly went from a salary of 1.4 million US dollars per season to 9.6 million US dollars – a salary increase of 585%, a net gain of 8.2 million dollars US per year.

But we simply do not have room for salary ceilings in the AFL to influence players with an offer like this one.

Most players consider a difference of $ 50,000 – $ 100,000 a year to change club, those who are very elite could reach $ 300,000 maximum absolute.

The great offers of the lower clubs are mainly used For example, Dustin Martin, whose contract offer at the beginning of 2017 year was worth about $ 800,000 a year and soared to 1,2 million dollars largely due to the offer of contracts. to his manager using the $ 1.5 million supposedly on the North Melbourne table as leverage.

I suspect a similar thing happened with Rory Sloane and the Adelaide Crows, where Sloane landed a five-year deal despite he's turning around next year, and I think it's pretty much the same thing between Jeremy McGovern and the West Coast Eagles.

We saw unique cases like Gary Ablett leaving Geelong to go to Gold Coast for an agreement that could have been $ 2 million a year, but that were extreme circumstances. Unless the liquidity of the league increases drastically, they will never become commonplace.

As long as the players' movement largely reaches both of these directions as more and more players evolve to top-level clubs, the Lower-ranked players who move to lower-level clubs – and then open the floodgates on the players' movement will only accelerate the widening of the gap between the best and the worst of the AFL. for example, at Carlton, whose "rebuilding of the 1966 game" won them out of a wooden spoon of four wins in 2015 until what looks like a wooden spoon to one or two wins in 2018.

A few weeks ago, Stephen Silvagni, the director of the Carlton list, denounced the same problem by saying that the system of free agencies favors high-level clubs

"If you are a player free, "Silvagni says:" If I am 26 years old, [you ask yourself] have not I won a flag? And can I get money out of it?

"You look at the best clubs, you do not really look at the bottom clubs, unless they have an offer in front of you that just blew you up"

The Solution de Silvagni was to introduce rules that make it more difficult for free agents to visit high level clubs, but this is just not realistic – the AFLPA would not accept it.

The main advantage of Silvagni is that you can not force a good player to join your bad club and as frustrating as that can be, there is really nothing to do except to reduce the speed at which players make

The Blues have been one of the most active clubs on the commercial scene over the past three years under the leadership of Silvagni, but the trades they've achieved are are largely in accordance with the instructions of the players' movement. [19659003] They sent top quality players like Lachie Henderson, Zach Tuohy and Bryce Gibbs, and brought the sloppy seconds of other clubs such as Sam Kerridge, Billie Smedts and Rhys Palmer

. Carlton used some draft picks to fuel his rebuilding, but he also deprived them of the adult generation that could help them stay more competitive right now, which would encourage the development of their young talents. [19659003] Because of this, they will probably need more time to become a quality football team than if these players stayed to coach and develop the next generation – good coaching can do a lot, but only a lot. They also need to have this influence on their teammates.

This is not because Carlton does not want to sign quality players. They did a great play for Tom Rockliff last year for example and said that they were fond of Jeremy McGovern and Andrew Gaff this year.

But Rockliff chose Port Adelaide for what was probably a better financial offer from Carlton because there was more Gaff and Gov will no doubt repel the Blues for the same reason.

Instead, the only way out of managing the list for Carlton is to engage hard in the "draft and hold" strategy and hope for it. that they bring the right kind of players into the club and that they are developed by the right kind of people in the football department.

And to Carlton's credit, that's what they've done in recent years and even though it's been a lot of impact on fieldfield for the moment, eventually the wheel will turn .

Certainly, Stephen Silvagni made some list management decisions in his time at the club that did not go well, but no one is perfect, and he's made a reasonably strong jo b d & Try to get Carlton out of the hole in which Shane Rogers dug them.

Gillon's "More Crafts" philosophy is not going to help a team like Carlton, as that will only make more difficult to stick to the repechage and maintenance strategy.

This strategy involves gradually bringing elite individuals who can become the reliable pillars of the game list. Works in the event that these players commit to being there in the long run.

In a climate where the movement of players is more common, it will be more difficult to convince players to engage in a long-term club that is not doing well. 19659003] Carlton has brought two of these players up to now under Silvagni (and hope that others can get out of what they've acquired in recent years).

Charlie Curnow has put a pen to stick to the club for the long-term, but the midfielder born WA-Patri Cripps still has to sign back beyond 2019.

Cripps seems to be the fair guy and the whispered word is that he told the club that he was going to start again. The fingers crossed that the rumor turns out to be true.

In an AFL where player movement is more common, however, the most likely scenario would be that Cripp looks back home and climbs up the ladder by asking for an exchange to the West Coast.

After all, if we loosen the loyalty ties in order to speed up the pace of the players' movement, what is the reason for not doing so?

I suspect that Gillon McLachlan is a smart enough guy to understand this, and it leads me to believe that his motivation behind the increase in the movement of the players is not to help the rebuilding of clubs, but something else.

it's not as if the NBA player's movement levels had dramatically increased this competition, becoming anyway an ultra-balanced utopian paradise – thank you very much Kevin Durant.

I quote it again: "We are coming to the end of"

I imagine that what Gillon McLachlan and the AFL really want, is that the trading period becomes an increasingly important media event, year after year, and continues to allow the league to omit the headlines at a time when newspapers might otherwise look to the beginning, say, of a new season of League A.

The movement of players has become a media freak in recent years, and if you've already spent a few hours squeaking Terry Wallace's voice in Trade Radio in October, you'll also notice that there are a lot of advertising possibilities

player movements have also increased – it was not so long ago that you would have trading periods where ten or fewer players could move clubs. every year we see 30 or 40.

This number is not limited to sustainability, especially if we want regular big players to change their colors regularly.

had a major drama when Ryan Griffen and Tom Boyd made last-minute trade demands in a market that we have started to tell since. The AFL, I think, would like to see a scandal like this every year.

However, in 2017, the trading period was almost a little fizzer. Few things happened before the deadline day, during which there was a wave of activity, but the vast majority had been telegraphed well in advance. There were some twists, but nothing at the level of Griffen-Boyd.

Offers like those made Jake Stringer, Bryce Gibbs or Gary Ablett were certainly interesting, but I suspect that behind the closed doors, the AFL would have been privately A little disappointed that someone like Nat Fyfe had decided to stay in Fremantle instead of making headlines in October.

And look, as a commercial period fanboy, the kind of guy who spends two weeks in October watching my cell phone. so that I can follow each curiosity and curveball, I understand. We all love a M Night Shyamalan at the end of the trading period.

However, if all he's going to do is strengthen strong clubs and make the process of rebuilding clubs more difficult and longer, then if I want the trading period better mediatized, why not look for ways to ensure that there is an even distribution of transactions over the period? rather than hurry up on the last day?

Speaking of someone who always wanted to write about the trading period, I would have liked to dissect in detail the offers made for Jake Stringer, Gary Ablett, Charlie Cameron, and Lachie Weller. Josh Schache last year – but there was no chance of doing so with them all stuck so close the day of the deadline.

Find a way to spread them over a longer period of time and I guarantee you that we will spend a lot of time wri talking about it and giving the AFL a lot of free publicity by doing it.

This seems like a good way for the league to have its cake and eat it too.