AFL strikes a balance on new team

THE AFL believes it has worked hard to strike a balance between building a competitive inaugural Gold Coast list and keeping things fair for the rest of the 16 AFL clubs.

The league released details of GC17's list development strategy at AFL House on Thursday; a strategy to build the pioneering Gold Coast club's playing list in 2009-10 before its entry in the AFL in 2010.

The AFL said it had two clear objectives in building Gold Coast from the outset:

* To assemble and develop lists that were competitive on AFL entry

* To minimise the downside and increase opportunities for the existing AFL clubs

AFL national and international development general manager David Matthews said the draft rules were established in consultation with the 16 AFL clubs and a working party consisting of representatives from seven AFL clubs.

"The involvement and support of the 16 AFL clubs is vitally important in this component of this expansion strategy, because this is the one that has the most impact on them," Matthews said.

"From the AFL's point of view, we received an overwhelming endorsement that the list establishment rules were fair and balanced.

"We needed to rely heavily on the national pool in the development of these new clubs, because they're going into developing markets.

"Previous [club] entrants in South Australia and Western Australia have had very well established mature state-league competitions that have delivered successful zone players and core groups of players for them."

Matthews said Gold Coast would not enter the 2011 AFL season with an entirely young list, as it also had the opportunity to recruit AFL-listed players and develop its own through the TAC Cup and VFL over the 2009-10 seasons.

"There are mechanisms in place to help the competition shift some mature-age players to the new franchise," he said.

"We think it's important that all of the 16 clubs and GC17, if they're successful in October, have significant lead time. The next two years' drafts are largely uncompromised, with the exception of, in particular, the Queensland talent.

"Existing AFL clubs have two years to really plan out their list strategy, given that they now have a full understanding of the implications of Gold Coast coming in.

"Gold Coast has two years to fast-track as many local players as they can and also start to develop their own strategy."

Asked if he could forecast whether the Gold Coast's inaugural list would be successful, Matthews said the recent NAB AFL under 16 championships were a good pointer. 

"The national under 16s were played in Queensland and it's effectively the 2010 draft pool, so we did a lot of independent draft analysis of the players coming through and tried to assess the draft pool," Matthews said.

"[We tried] to forecast [the draft as] 'above average', 'normal' or 'below average' and it was the view of the AFL – and it was supported by the recruiting managers that we canvassed as well – is that it's about a normal pool coming through."

Matthews said the AFL briefed the 16 AFL clubs' chief executives, football managers or proxy representatives on Thursday morning of the Gold Coast's inaugural list plans.

The working party was: Andrew Dillon (chairman, AFL general manager legal and business affairs), Graeme Allan (Brisbane Lions football operations manager), Adrian Anderson (AFL general manager football operations), Derek Hine (Collingwood recruiting manager), Andrew Ireland (Sydney Swans football operations manager), David Matthews (AFL general manager national and international development), Tony Peek (AFL assistant to chief executive), Ian Robson (Hawthorn chief executive ), Cameron Schwab (former Fremantle chief executive and now Melbourne chief executive), Kevin Sheehan (AFL national talent manager), Steven Trigg (Adelaide chief executive) and Stephen Wells (Geelong recruiting manager).