WELCOME to the one week of the year in which it is OK to talk about 18-year-old men like thoroughbreds at a yearling sale.

It is time for the NAB AFL Draft, the time of the football year when hope springs eternal and everyone is a potential champion.

The event has grown in stature from a meeting behind closed doors at the old AFL House to a nationally televised roadshow that various state governments actively court. Last year on the Gold Coast, this year in western Sydney, then back on the Gold Coast for the next three years after that.

If you are really into your footy, there are lots of reasons why you should enjoy the draft. Here are four to get you started.

Parity
The draft we have is the best football mechanism we have to keep the competition at an even keel (coaching, development and administration notwithstanding) and the theory behind it is eminently fair: give the worst performing teams the first option at recruiting the best players entering the system.

There's no hiding behind the fact that interest in this year's draft is just that bit muted. Handing Greater Western Sydney so many of the opening picks (11 out of the first 14 is the final tally thanks to some deft wheeling and dealing) is necessary as the club enters its first season in the AFL. There's no point having the Giants in the competition and reaping the benefits of having an 18th team without making a few collective sacrifices to help them become competitive.

It means that of the top four teams of 2011, West Coast is the first to have a selection and that's not until pick 28. Geelong, Collingwood and Hawthorn don't have selections until after that, which means that for their supporters mock drafts and AFL talent manager Kevin Sheehan's top 30 is all but irrelevant.

In its bid to help bring about some parity to the AFL, the draft has worked out well. Over the last 10 years, and with the obvious exception of Gold Coast, only Richmond, Carlton and Melbourne have not played in a preliminary final. When most supporters have relatively fresh memories of watching their team play deep into September it could be argued that the system works.

The draft and the salary cap underpin a basically fair competition. In this context, the impending introduction of free agency won't harm the AFL's competitive balance. Every player might want to play for Collingwood, but making it happen under the cap is another matter entirely.

For further assurance, let's head overseas. In the last 10 years, just three teams - Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal - have won the English Premier League, where there is neither a draft nor a salary cap. In the last 20 years, the only other winner was Blackburn Rovers. Manchester City might well break through and win the title this year, but only thanks to the hundreds of millions of pounds poured into the club by its principal owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, to build a virtual dream team.

How often do you hear Wigan or Stoke City being talked about as a chance to win the EPL?

American baseball has a draft, but no salary cap. Before long, the best players find themselves drawn to the clubs who can afford to pay the big bucks, such as the New York Yankees, New York Mets, the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies. Over a 162-game baseball season chemistry comes into play, which explains why the loaded Boston Red Sox crashed and burned this season. But ask fans of the Kansas City Royals whether they'd like to even be in the shoes of the Red Sox - they haven't made the playoffs for 26 years.

The NFL, from which the AFL competition structure draws so much inspiration, has both a salary cap and a draft and nearly every season, an unheralded team rises from less than .500 to Super Bowl contention.

Which brings us to the second reason why we look forward to the draft.

Hang on, help is on its way
Thanks to the Little River Band for the inspiration with that one, but the draft offers salvation and the hope that some assistance is coming.

Carlton loaded up on defenders last year. Matthew Watson looks like he will make it, while Nick Duigan, plucked from the airport as he was about to leave for two years volunteering in Africa, stepped straight into the backline and played with the assuredness of a five-year player.

There is always the debate at club level between picking the best available player and drafting for need. But there's upside in both. "Best available" should be playing senior football soon enough, while "needs players" should make their team better, if not immediately then in the medium term.

The aftermath
The best entertainment at the draft comes in the minutes after, when the recruiters are grilled about each and every selection. "We had our eyes on him all year and couldn't believe he lasted this long," is the recruiters' favourite comment.

Another worth paying attention to is, "We can see him being in the mix for round one," which usually means round one of the following season.

When a player is tagged as a "project player", then don't hold your breath with respects to seeing that player in the side any time soon.

The draft is an oasis in the desert that is the off-season
It has been eight weeks since the Grand Final. How many of us are truly ready after such a short period for the weekly trials and tribulations of the AFL season? The steady anticipation through the week, followed by the gamut of emotions during the 100 minutes of play and the exhilaration and/or anguish that follows the final siren.

But many are ready for the draft. No games for decision, no premiership points up for grabs, but it is the start to the build-up to the next season. Once the draft is complete we can start plotting our best 22s and planning our Dream Team combinations. Optimism abounds and everybody leaving Sydney Olympic Park on Thursday night - recruiters and coaches, and supporters following on TV, radio or online, will have genuine cause to believe that 2012 will be better than 2011.

There are not too many times in football when 18 teams win on the same day, which is why Thursday night will always be one of the best days on the footy calendar.

Passing to the Bucks
Nathan Buckley and Alastair Clarkson both faced the media on Monday in their first day back for the year. In the case of Buckley at Collingwood, it was his first time in charge of the full squad.

There was not much to take away from either coach. Buckley got a taste of his news world today, with the Herald Sun reporting that "Sixteen journalists, eight television cameras, six photographers and more than a handful of casual observers" were there to hear him say that he was well prepared to be the senior coach of the Magpies.

There had been talk that Buckley was planning to overhaul the Collingwood game plan, but the suggestion from the new coach on Monday was that there will more likely be tweaks than massive changes.

"It's a gradual evolution. You can't afford to stand still; standing still is going backwards," he said in an earnest display of coach-speak.

He had an ally at Waverley in Clarkson, who said that irrespective of Geelong's premiership win last year, Collingwood had been the best side of the last two years and that the cause for optimism at Waverley Park this summer is that the Hawks ran Collingwood so desperately close in last year's preliminary final.

Not everything is changing at Collingwood. The Pies depart for their annual Arizona training camp tomorrow to again lay the foundation for what is expected to be another successful season.

An excellent appointment
This column doesn't give many shout-outs, but will make an exception this week, offering some congratulations to SEEK.com co-founder Paul Bassat, who was appointed by Mike Fitzpatrick on Monday to fill the remaining vacancy on the AFL Commission.

This column is a friend of Bassat and rest assured, he is a footy tragic, albeit one who has enjoyed a fabulous career in business, taking SEEK from an idea to a market capitalisation of $2.2 billion and its standing as one of Australia's top 100 companies.

Discretion keeps us from saying which team he supports, but it is a club with a particularly rabid fan base and he buys a membership every season and happily sits with his family among the rank and file rather than in a corporate suite he could so easily afford.

Most importantly, he is an industry leader in the entire media and digital space, an area the League is rapidly embracing through the creation of a new division, AFL Media, which formally starts operating in January next year.

He will provide the League with an excellent sounding board as its digital and media operations continue to grow. With only a bit of bias, it appears to be an excellent appointment.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs