Lloyd call for midseason draft

[Freo Dr]

All of the reasons given for a mid season draft are covered by expanding the allowed list size of clubs - either rookie or main list.

The clubs have to plan ahead and manage their lists, but assuming they half a brain can have players of each type in reserve if somebody goes down. Fitness wise they train with the AFL club so no big step up. Lastly and most importantly players, AFL clubs and WAFL, SANFL etc clubs don't get screwed around - they all know where they stand for that season.

I follow the WAFL a lot more of late and would hate it if midseason going for a spot in the finals, Hawthorn come along and draft my teams best player.

AFL expanded the rookie list for this reason. The bigger issue and only reason they didn't expand the main list which would probably have kept players like Robertson in the game is because that would cost clubs more money or advantage the wealthy clubs more when some cannot cover costs already.

If we had less teams in Melbourne ......

 

[Pevers-Legend]

If you can't get through 25 games for a season with 52 different blokes, get some people who are actually qualified to be employed down at your club.

You do realise this is not 1990.

Lists are a lot smaller these days.

 

[The Passenger]

timmy from thomastown is on the ball there - it really allows clubs to get a bit lazy during their off-season recruiting and have a fallback option during the season if things aren't going to plan.

44 blokes is heaps to have on a list. It punishes clubs who have recruited well, ensured they haven't got to many injury prone players on their lists, covered all positions well, and come mid season have no need to recruit anyone else.

yes, injuries can cruel a team and are often bad luck but to me if you look the injury lists each season seem to be pretty similar which suggests there is much more management to it then what a lot of people will admit.

for instance, i don't think west coast's injury management is good at all - in fact it's one of the only footballing departments i wouldn't be happy with. we always seem to miss key players, and we seem to have little idea when they are returning (ask any west coast fan and every year we always seem to have guys who stay on the "fitness test" list for 4 or 5 weeks... to me that is redicolous. when a guy is listed as test, if he doesn't pass his test you'd assume most of the time (barring any unforeseen setback) he should be playing the week after)

or look at someone like david misson. he was at the swans for the first half of this decade when they basically seemed to have a full list to choose from every weekend. he moves to st kilda and suddenly they are one of the least injured sides in the competition. he's obviously very good at his job.

when a club does well in their injury management they should be rewarded.

 

[Invigoration]

You do realise this is not 1990.

Lists are a lot smaller these days.

Meh, I thought it was 44 senior and 8 rookies.

It's close enough to that anyway, who gives a shit?

 

[Howard Littlejohn]

No way. It sucked in the past, and changed some state league seasons; while producing very few players who played more than a handful of games.

Maybe a mid-season trade of AFL listed players who have not played an AFL game that season. But the movement in soeting like that would probably be so small as to not be worthwhile.

 

[Guido]

Mid-season draft was tried for a few years and was axed after 1993. No reason to think things would be different now.

What was the strike rate of even the National draft pre-1993? All aspects of drafting have improved out of sight since - the success of a mid-season draft now would be a very different proposition to the early nineties.

Sam Mitchell, Davey, Dale Morris, Ben Hudson, even Barlow now at Freo : a few are top liners, some have been awarded with All-Australians - odds are that a couple of these blokes would have been picked up from the VFL mid-season if they had have been available.

Other than their respective current 2nd tier teams losing one of their best players, I don't see any harm in it. Just gives SANFL/VFL/WAFL players an added opportunity, with the chance of being part of a fantastic story - player X playing with middle of the road team in VFL in June, vital AFL premiership player in September.

 

[Dave Grohl]

While it would disadvantage the lower leagues, some sort of financial compensation to the clubs who have players poached might soften the blow. I'd like to see it happen.

 

[Adelaide Hawk]

While it would disadvantage the lower leagues, some sort of financial compensation to the clubs who have players poached might soften the blow. I'd like to see it happen.

Since when did the AFL ever consider the welfare of lower leagues?