THE AFL is open to considering changes to its free agency model at the end of next season when the current collective bargaining agreement with the players expires. 

Star free agents Sam Draper and Oscar Allen left struggling clubs Essendon and West Coast, respectively, at the end of last year and both played key roles for Brisbane as the Lions claimed their third successive premiership in Saturday's Grand Final. 

The outcome sparked discussion about the merits of free agency, which was designed to promote greater player movement and theoretically allowed lower-ranked clubs to offer higher salaries to in-demand players. 

But the opposite has largely been the case since free agency was brought in at the end of 2012, with uncontracted free agents from struggling clubs often seeking moves to powerful rivals in search of on-field success. 

AFL head of football performance and list management Justin Reid, who spent more than 10 years as Adelaide's list manager and has also worked as a player agent, said a revamped free agency model could form part of the League's discussions with the AFL Players Association next year. 

He said maintaining competitive balance was key to the AFL's decision-making as it worked through any potential changes. 

"I think that was the intent when free agency was first brought in back in 2012 and at that stage I was actually a player agent and I think there's enough data and information to talk to whether it's restricted free agency or unrestricted free agency, and what that looks like," Reid told Continental Tyres AFL Trade Radio. 

"Again, it's very aligned to the collective bargaining agreement and that comes up at the end of 2027 so I think there'll be ongoing conversations around what that looks like and how that impacts either player movement and then how that kind of assists - or maybe not assists - competitive balance."

Asked whether the League would consider placing restrictions on how many free agents that top-ranked teams could recruit, or even ban top-four teams from signing free agents, Reid said those ideas would form part of the AFL's broader assessment of the player movement landscape. 

"A lot of it's tied to the collective bargaining agreement and these need to be open conversations with the Players Association," Reid said. 

"So I think what we do is look at world sport and understand player movement, what that looks like, and then how we can apply that to our game."

Reid said the League was open to considering a change to the rules around 'pick purchasing', where a club agrees to pay a portion of another club's salary cap in exchange for draft selections.

However, that is currently only possible under the AFL's player movement rules when that salary cap contribution is tied to a specific player in a trade deal.

"The type of pick purchasing we've talked to historically was obviously the Jack Bowes situation which was, I guess, call it a salary dump," Reid said of the 2022 deal where Gold Coast sent Bowes and pick No.7 to Geelong, in exchange for a future third-round pick and the Cats paying all of Bowes' heavily back-ended salary. 

"Where we've evolved in this space and depending on the transaction, we're certainly open-minded where a club can use salary cap space to look at pick purchasing. But at the moment, the way the rules are written, a player has to be aligned to that. 

"We've made a fair bit of change this year already with the draft bidding system and with Tasmania coming in. Our point of view is, what does it look like at 2030 and beyond and not trying to make too much change right here, right now. 

"I think we've evolved in that pick purchasing space … [it's] certainly a consideration in the future."