Blues riled after losing battle on AFL draft shake-up; Beveridge savages league’s scoring, media obsessions

Carlton have criticised the AFL for its overhaul of father-son and academy draft rules, saying the immediate changes will unfairly disadvantage several clubs.

The Blues and Port Adelaide have lost their battle with the league over draft changes and will have to pay more at the national draft for, respectively, father-son talent Cody Walker and academy graduate Dougie Cochrane.

The AFL announced sweeping changes on Wednesday, designed to make clubs pay a “fairer” price for high-end talent.

The changes mean clubs can only use two picks in the draft to match a bid placed on a priority access player, up to and including pick 36. In recent national drafts, clubs have been able to use a collection of lower picks to match bids, even if those bids came in the first 10 selections.

It means the Blues – based on current ladder position – would need 2700 points, which would require them to use their pick three and, hypothetically, as low as 27 to match a bid made before their selection to obtain Walker.

Previously, clubs accessed high-end talent, such as Collingwood’s Nick Daicos, the Western Bulldogs’ Sam Darcy, the Brisbane Lions’ Will Ashcroft and Gold Coast’s Zeke Uwland, by stockpiling later picks to match an early bid.

Clubs will be allowed to go into deficit of 412 draft value index points if they cannot match the bid with two selections. The AFL said it would be impossible for a club to land four players rated in the first round through matching bids, as Gold Coast did in the 2023 national draft. The AFL believes the Suns would have been able to add a maximum of two of their four academy graduates chosen in the first round that year – Jed Walter, Ethan Read, Jake Rogers and Will Graham – under the new rules.

The AFL rejected lobbying from the Blues, Port Adelaide and Essendon (who hope to land Darren Bewick’s son Koby in the 2027 national draft) to delay the rule changes until after Tasmania enters the competition in 2028.

The Blues agree changes need to be made in the long term to create a more equitable system, but president Robert Priestley said they should come “with an appropriate runway so as not to disadvantage specific clubs”.

“Part of the clear case we put forward was that the AFL had to allow all clubs to properly plan and prepare for any changes to draft rules, in order to provide the same runway that previous clubs have been afforded, and as a result, have significantly benefited from,” Priestley wrote in a letter to Blues members on Wednesday.

“This was the only appropriate and truly equitable way to implement such changes, however today’s discretionary decision by the AFL has gone against this, with full knowledge that it will disadvantage certain clubs more than others, which no AFL rule change should.”

Greg Swann, the league’s head of football performance, said that although the detail had not been finalised until now, the likelihood of changes was flagged at a CEOs meeting in July last year.

“We ended up coming to the conclusion there is never a good time [to make the change],” Swann said.

There will be no change to free agency compensation after the AFL Players’ Association rejected an AFL attempt to keep the top 10 selections free of compensation picks awarded to clubs who lose a free agent.

It means Port Adelaide could still receive a pick inside the top 10 if star midfielder Zak Butters decides to leave, and they miss finals, making their decision on whether to match a bid to force a trade more complicated.

Approval was needed from the PA to change it as the compensation rules are part of the collective bargaining agreement.

The players’ association told the league the proposed change to first-round compensation would negatively impact player movement as well as competitive balance.

Under other changes, a loading has been placed on top-four clubs – 20 per cent for the grand finalists, and 10 per cent for third and fourth – in their pursuit of high-end talent the next year at the draft, while clubs that finished 11th-18th will have a 10 per cent discount.

Bottom-five clubs that have their first-round pick slide back one or more spot due to a matched bid within the top five picks – as occurred last season when Richmond started the draft with pick two but had their first selection at No.7 – will now receive a compensation pick in the second round.

The AFL hopes that will assist help struggling clubs rebuild faster. If a club chooses to trade out its top five pick, it will not receive a compensation pick, nor will the club that finished outside the bottom five receive compensation if its pick slides back.

‘The AFL are a punching bag’: Beveridge calls for AFL review

Andrew Wu

Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has called for the AFL to implement a review into its raft of rule changes that have left fans confused.

Beveridge used his press conference on Wednesday to launch into a three-minute monologue, criticising the league over the new last-disposal rule, changes to the draft and turning the sport into a “ridiculous game of ping pong”.

His candid views came as the league announced sweeping changes to father-son and academy draft rules, which will have a pronounced effect on Carlton and Port Adelaide in their respective pursuits of Cody Walker and Dougie Cochrane.

The AFL has endured a difficult fortnight on and off the field, highlighted by the farcical intervention of the ARC to null and void about 50 seconds of play and award a mark to St Kilda’s Rowan Marshall, and the removal of its appeals board chairman Will Houghton, KC, for the wording in his judgment in reducing a ban for young Saint Lance Collard over a homophobic remark.

“The AFL are a punching bag at the moment,” Beveridge said. “When you think about the actual game, the rules, whether it’s tribunal and the appeals, we’re trying to make things perfect in a game that’s chaotic.

“The unfortunate thing is, you guys and girls [the media] are the ones who the AFL are paranoid about. They don’t want you to criticise them. Every time you do, they go and change something.

“It’s not this regime’s fault, it’s the operational regime of the last 15 years that keep changing things.

“Now we have a tax act of regulations that are too hard to administer. Compliance is difficult.

“The game’s chaotic, it’s not black and white.”

Beveridge criticised the use of technology to rule on last-disposal out-of-bounds calls, which has meant a rule change introduced to speed up the game has been causing longer delays.

“Ultimately, if there’s confusion as to who it went off, what did we used to do? We used to ball it in,” Beveridge said.

“How about we ball it in again? People will make mistakes, and it might have come off someone’s boot. But now we have to bring another layer in, we have to reverse it. We haven’t been strong enough to go ‘yep, mistake was made, move on’.”

Beveridge said the overhaul of the draft rules was another example of the league “making a change on the run”.

The Dogs were one of the major beneficiaries of the old rules, acquiring Jamarra Ugle-Hagan at pick one as a Next Generation Academy selection after a season they made finals, and gun father-son Sam Darcy with pick two in 2021 just weeks after they made a grand final.

Beveridge said the push to increase scoring was driven by commercial interests.

“We’ve turned the game into this ridiculous game of ping pong because we want money for broadcasts because there’s more ads during the goals,” Beveridge said. “It can’t all be just about revenue. It’s got to be about the beauty and nature of the game. We’ve got some challenges ahead. That’s me off my soap box.”

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