Players
Historically, the pre-season draft has involved mostly recycled players. Until 2008, due to the standard players contract expiring at the end of November, players who did not wish to sign a new contract with their current club were forced to enter the pre-season draft if they were unable to be traded to another club during the trade week held prior to the national draft. There was no free agency in the AFL to allow uncontracted players to easily move clubs until after the 2012 season. Delisted players had the option of nominating for either the national or pre-season drafts. In 2008 the rules were changed to also give uncontracted players the option of nominating for either draft. However, the number of players being selected after being delisted or coming out of contract is diminishing, as most teams are not prepared to pick them ahead of younger players.
The lack of free agency was a powerful bargaining tool during trade week, as the team with the first pick can refuse a trade for a current uncontracted player at another club, and then recruit the player that wants to join their team for free with the first pick in the pre-season draft without giving anything to the other club. Conversely, the threat of losing a player for nothing into the pre-season draft can force a team to trade him for less than the player's true value.
The main reason for players not nominating in the National draft is that those who nominate for the Pre-season draft may set the terms for their contracts; in contrast, all players selected in the National Draft are not able to set a minimum acceptable contract period or salary.
Given that changes to each AFL club's playing list is strictly restricted to the three drafts and the trade week, the headline news following each pre-season draft is often who wasn't selected, as much as who was selected. In the 2005 draft this included that Shane Woewodin, the 2000 Brownlow Medal winner, was not selected, and hence would not play football at AFL level in 2006. In 2008, the main story was about whether another Brownlow Medallist, Ben Cousins would be selected, which he subsequently was with Richmond's pick 6.
Read more about this topic: AFL Pre-season Draft
Famous quotes containing the word players:
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)