Priority Draft Pick - Tanking

Tanking

There was annual speculation that poor performing teams manipulated their results after they were eliminated from finals contention, in order to ensure they remain below the eligibility criterion and receive a priority pick under the pre-2012 format; this was referred to as "tanking."

There are a wide variety of behaviours which could be considered to be tanking. These include:

• Instructing the players to deliberately lose matches
• Employing unusual tactics in matches, including using players in positions where they do not usually play
• Resting star players with minor injuries, who would likely not be rested if the team were contesting finals
• Playing younger players who do not yet have much experience at AFL level

While all of these behaviours can be interpreted as an attempt to avoid winning matches, all but the first point can also be justified as a sensible player management and development strategy for a team with no chance of playing finals, which complicates the debate about tanking. In addition, tanking has the significant issue that fans of these clubs sometimes openly support against their teams on game day; however, this could also be justified as a sign of fan dissatisfaction at the club's poor performance and/or its administration.

Also complicating the debate is the fact that different people have different opinions on what is acceptable behaviour. When speaking about West Coast's 2010 priority draft pick, coach John Worsfold openly defended his right to play young players in unfamiliar positions to assist their development; but, when speaking about Carlton's 2007 priority draft pick, assistant coach Tony Liberatore said he personally thought it was wrong to play younger players in place of senior players whose niggling injuries would not be bad enough to force their omission if the team were playing finals, and Brock McLean revealed that he requested to be traded away from the Melbourne Football Club because he disagreed with similar strategies in the lead-up to Melbourne's 2009 priority draft pick.

The legal implications of tanking on sports betting is also a significant problem, and in 2009 a betting agency temporarily suspended betting on the wooden spoon when it became concerned about the potential legal ramifications if tanking or other corruption were ever proven. The penalty for any player or official found to have been involved in tanking is a possible lifetime suspension and/or a fine of $100,000 for each offence.

By shifting the Priority Round from before to after the First Round in 2006, the AFL reduced the incentive to tank, but did not eliminate it; the incentive was reduced further with the 2012 reform. The AFL has the endorsement of the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation that the integrity of the game is sufficiently protected under the priority system.

Some members of the media, particularly from the Herald Sun, previously called for the priority draft pick to be scrapped altogether, and some journalists call for a draft lottery to be applied in the first round for the bottom five or six teams. When asked in 2011, the AFL Players Association's official position was that it would like to see the priority pick abolished due to the perception of tanking and its impact on the public's confidence in the game, rather than any suggestion of actual corruption.