JAMES Gallagher has stepped into one of football's biggest jobs.

The new chief executive of the AFL Players' Association started in the position last October, after Paul Marsh had vacated the seat earlier in 2025 after 11 years at the helm.

Gallagher has been quick to move since arriving back at the PA, where he worked for six years as general manager of legal and player affairs before heading to North Melbourne, where he had four years in the strategy, legal and football department teams.

He has met with all the AFLW teams and by the end of March will have done the same with all of the men's teams too, and has leant on Collingwood skipper and AFLPA president Darcy Moore, former president Patrick Dangerfield and Sydney AFLW star Chloe Molloy in his first few months in the top role.

How does he expect to be different and similar to his predecessor? The son of AFL life member and SANFL legend Phil Gallagher is keen to do it his way.

"There's probably quite a few similarities because I worked with (Marsh) for six years. I learned a fair bit from him. Before I came to the PA (the first time), I had a legal role acting for the SANFL in relation to the move of footy to Adelaide Oval. I then spent six years advocating for the players really strongly. I spent four years within clubland," he said.

"Having seen it from a few different vantage points, not to say 'Marshy' hadn't and he'd spent some time in clubland as well, but I think that maybe will give me a slightly different perspective I'll hopefully bring to the role."

AFL.com.au spoke with Gallagher about some of the key issues facing the players.

THE NEXT PAY DEAL

THE AFL last year brought together a group of club CEOs and executives to form a working committee for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement and players' pay deal, with the current arrangement finishing at the end of 2027. Gallagher, as North's representative, was on that panel before winning the AFLPA role. Very quickly he excused himself from the panel.

Under the current agreement, the League and Players' Association are required to meet later this year to start discussions in earnest, with the future of broadcasting a key pillar to how the game looks and is funded.

The current TV deal with Channel Seven and Fox Footy runs through to the end of 2031, with Gallagher saying it seemed "logical" to have the next CBA align in timing.

The next pay deal will be Gallagher's biggest task – but not his first CBA, having been central to their mens' 2017 bargaining agreement and multiple AFLW deals that followed. He said the addition of Tasmania added extra layers to the next agreement with the League on their share of the pie.

"The game's going fantastically well. The players are in a really good spot, but it doesn't mean there aren't improvements. Sometimes it's just about future proofing and part of the appeal for me in taking the role was that I think we're at an interesting point," Gallagher said.

"There is a shift in the broadcast landscape. We're going to have a new team coming in. Even the commercial landscape is changing rapidly. All of those things coming together will make for an interesting discussion.

"The players are the partners in the game. Our male and female players are so critical. We're really keen to work with the AFL and the clubs to continue to grow the game because if the game grows, the players are really strong beneficiaries of it. They're really up for that.

"We've seen that already. State of Origin we backed straight away. Wildcard Round, we backed in. Continuing to explore those with the AFL is going to be really important and we'll see that through the CBA discussion as well."

Gallagher saw first-hand the importance of North's thriving AFLW program to commercial relationships and government partnerships, and the impact women's football had at the Roos on participation and membership.

Where the revenue share lands in the next deal will be a point of conjecture, but there are already changes on the horizon for AFLW with a salary cap model expected to be introduced as soon as 2027 as they move away from a tiered pay scale.

"Total player payments will look to stay the same, the minimum payment will still be the same, but it's about giving players and clubs greater flexibility to negotiate the real value of that player," Gallagher said.

IS PRE-SEASON LONG ENOUGH?

RICHMOND'S Adem Yze and West Coast's Andrew McQualter have put it on the agenda: clubs don't think they have enough time with players over pre-season to make in-roads into game plan, development and preparation for the season ahead.

Another block of injuries in recent weeks since teams' return to training in January has heightened those calls, given the pre-season is shorter because of the AFL's push to give players a longer Christmas break and then the addition of Gather Round and Opening Round to the fixture, which has brought forward the start of the year.

Gallagher said players were spending most of their official breaks getting ready for the pre-season program.

"The pre-season is shorter. The leave of players is not actually increased materially. We're asking players at the moment around their off-seasons and the vast majority – over 90 per cent – are back preparing as an AFL footballer within a month of starting their leave. They don't take time off," he said.

"That time away is critical and then it's over to the clubs to get them ready to play in the time frame they're given. We haven't yet seen any stark increases in injury rates."

Gallagher pointed to the longevity of players going deeper into their mid to late 30s, such as Scott Pendlebury, Dangerfield, Dayne Zorko, Taylor Walker and Dane Rampe, as a sign the training in and out of season is right.

"Our best players are playing longer. Maybe getting the balance they're getting in their lives is enabling them to play longer. That's a good thing for our game. I'd be really cautious to tinker with it too much, because it doesn't seem to be broken at the moment based on those metrics," he said.

LONG-TERM DEALS, TRADING AND FREE AGENCY FUTURE

CAPPING long-term contracts is not on the agenda for the new players' boss. Neither is players being able to be traded without their consent, even if they have long-term contracts with clubs, nor does he want player salaries to be made public.

There are 15 players across the league signed to the end of 2032 or longer (Sam Walsh, Caleb Serong and Kysaiah Pickett the longest to the end of 2034), with those deals going past the current broadcast deal.

The AFL has floated capping the length of deals as part of future CBA discussions, with concerns the long-term deals could see clubs find themselves in trouble, but Gallagher is strong that such a move would not be supported by the players' union.

"I can't see that happening. For us, it's never been clear to me why people think it's a problem. We have a very restricted environment, players are more restricted in our game than most. You don't choose where you start, you have no complete freedom over your movement in terms of the club you go to until you're 10 years into the game for most, some eight, depending how much they're paid," Gallagher said.

"Putting greater restrictions in place is unlikely. I don't think the longer-term contracts are a problem. I appreciate there are some out there that have a view they are. Restraints and restrictions aren't necessarily the solution.

"If the AFL or clubs through the CBA discussions think longer-term contracts are a problem, again we don't necessarily buy into that, but there may be different incentives that could be put in place and we might be up for that conversation. But I don't imagine capping contracts is something we're going to be up for."

Trading players without their consent is also not a conversation the PA is entertaining.

"In short, no. Our players are well paid in an Australian context, but they're not paid in the same way that we see internationally where some of those features exist. I just don't think we're going to see it," Gallagher said.

Gallagher's time at North Melbourne showed him how struggling teams can find it hard to attract free agents, with the AFLPA now open to looking at model tweaks, including reaching free agency earlier at six years and the introduction of player options and more clauses in deals, as part of discussions.

"The part is about how we tie in player movement to competitive balance more broadly," he said. "Maybe more movement would help competitive balance conceptually and that's something for us to do some work on."

Last year's trade period was viewed as the clubs taking back some of the players' power, as Zach Merrett, Jy Simpkin and Rowan Marshall were held to their contracts at their respective clubs despite strongly pushing for trades. Gallagher described the trade window as "balanced" between clubs and players.

"Whilst as a Players' Association we want the players to get the outcomes they're looking for, we're comfortable with that outcome. That is part of the benefit of those contracts for the clubs is you take greater control over the trade situation if the player wants out. Equally, we see clubs nudging players out sometimes as well and we probably saw some examples of that in the most recent trade period," he said.

Last year, there were 58 million-dollar players in the game, with that number to rise rapidly again once Tasmania hits the market at the end of 2027. But Gallagher said he saw no reason, even for the best paid tier of players, to have their salaries public.

"It's not a conversation I've had with the players. I don't know if there's any benefit to the player in that at the moment."

THE ILLICIT DRUGS CODE

There have been ongoing discussions between the League and players' body for the past two years about an updated model for the drugs policy, with Gallagher in the thick of talks since taking on the position.

"We're in really good dialogue with the AFL around the illicit drugs policy. I'd be hopeful that we'll be able to resolve that sooner than later, but I can't give any guarantees when that will be," he said.

"I think where we'll get to is a model that very much puts the player at the centre of it and has a lot more structure and rigour around the support, but is in line with that contemporary medical approach.

"Part of it is making sure that there's the right support systems in place, it's not just left to the club doctors."

Debate over the use of hair testing has played out over recent years, with Gallagher the AFLPA's legal counsel when the IDP was last formalised in 2016, and he said the separation of testing was central to the updated policy.

"In some ways, confining urine testing to Sports Integrity Australia and the anti-doping code and confining hair testing to the illicit drugs policy might help to provide clarity of where each policy starts and stops as well," he said.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR STATE OF ORIGIN?

The AFLPA is surveying the players who featured in the AFL Origin clash for feedback, but the resounding sense is the cohort wants to continue to have representative football back.

"It's pretty clear there was a lot of enjoyment first and foremost and a lot of pride. They really relished the opportunity to play against the best of the best," Gallagher said.

"We're currently surveying those players and that data is trickling in, but it's a pretty consistent theme (that) they want to continue it. The players want to play, there's no doubt about that. We'll sit down with the AFL sooner than later to start working through the model."

Gallagher said it was important that all players had the chance to feature at representative level, be it in Origin or International Rules, and that the return of the clash in Perth for the first Origin game this century had sparked the players.

"We should be looking to create an opportunity for every player to play some sort of representative football. There's lots of different models we could explore, but I do like the idea that everyone can aspire to it," he said.

"When the game was announced and I was starting prior to Christmas, I had quite a few players from states other than Victoria and WA say to me, 'Hey, when are – insert state – going to be a part of it?".