THE No.1 pick in the pre-season draft could be traded under a proposal raised at a recent meeting of the AFL's player movement working group.
AFL.com.au understands a member of the player movement group floated the possibility of allowing the wooden-spooner to trade the pre-season draft's first pick.
When asked whether that was a change the AFL would consider, football operations manager Steve Hocking indicated it was, with the League prepared to consider any rule tweaks that will encourage more player movement.
The true value of the pre-season draft's opening pick is in the leverage it gives its holder during the trade period. If that team is trying to trade for an uncontracted player but is struggling to reach a deal with his existing club, it can ask the player to nominate for the pre-season draft and claim him there for free.
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More often than not in this scenario, the clubs will agree to a trade, but the bottom-placed club is well placed to broker a favourable deal given its pre-season draft trump card.
If the AFL decided to allow a team to trade the pre-season No.1 pick, higher-ranked teams could look to broker deals with the wooden-spooner.
If such a rule had been in place in 2016, Hawthorn, for example, could have sought to trade with that year's 18th-placed team, Essendon, for the opening pick in the pre-season draft.
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The Hawks endured drawn out negotiations with Gold Coast that year as they sought to secure then-Suns midfielder Jaeger O'Meara.
Having finished fifth on the ladder, the Hawks entered the trade period with a modest hand of draft picks, a hand that became threadbare when they traded their first-round selection to Sydney for Tom Mitchell.
Hawthorn eventually acquired O'Meara but only after entering into a pick exchange with St Kilda, in which it paid through the nose for the Saints' first-round pick, No.10 overall.
However, the Hawks might have been able to acquire O'Meara sooner and at a cheaper price if they had been able to broker a deal with Essendon for the pre-season draft's first pick – and its leverage at trade time.
Under Hocking's leadership, the AFL is exploring a range of innovations to the player movement system, including:
- A mid-season trade or draft period.
- Short-term EPL-style player loans.
- Promotion of state league players.
- Free agency for life after serving the initial qualification period, and automatic unrestricted status after 10 years' service.
Former Port Adelaide defender Cam O'Shea was the only player taken in last year's pre-season draft, while the previous two pre-season drafts were abandoned after every club chose not to participate.
The members of the player movement working group include club representatives Stephen Wells (Geelong), Stephen Silvagni (Carlton), Brad Lloyd (Fremantle) and Graham Wright (Hawthorn), along with Hocking and the AFL's chief legal counsel Andrew Dillon and integrity chief Ken Wood.
