Free Agency and Contracts

[Ringo]

Now that trade periods are over and we have had free agency waht are your thoughts on this.

At the risk of being called negative I think Free agency has led to the players taking more control of their destiny and minimizing clubs effectiveness,

Believe Free Agency has been the catalyst for players to break contracts. Players with one or two years to go on contract tell clubs they want to be traded to X club and obviously it is for more money or longer contract to give stability.  we see the clubs caving in and try and get best deal for the club for the departing player.

I am a believer that we should do away with compensation picks and replace with a system where a club has to use the deemed pick on that player. eg if Frawley is deemed a round 1 pick Hawthorn has to use their Round 1 pick to acquire him on top of the negotiated trade,  May stop the raiding of lower clubs though and encourage the lower clubs to raid higher clubs.

Also think players should not be able to nominate a club of choice until they have been on AFL list for a minimum of 4 years. Think it is outrageous that 2nd and 3rd year players nominate to go to a club.

Do not know whether this is related to FA and players gaining more power but we have also seen where player influence has resulted in the sacking of 3 coaches this year.

Few thoughts

[Capper]

I think rather than breaking the contract, if a player wants to go to another club then that club needs to take over the contract rather than accepting a new one. that way the player doesnt leave the club for more money. So for instance if a player has 2 years to run on their contract, then the new club will take over that contract and then after the 2 years have passed the club will then have to deal with the player regarding a new contract.

Compo picks are a farce. How Frawley is a Round 1 pick i will never know. Swans cant even use theirs for Esky, but im not bitter. I like the idea of trading players instead of compo picks. Would have been interesting to see who the Hawks would have given the dees for Frawley

[Ricochet]

Agree that breaking of contracts is very very concerning and do not like it at all. and don't mind that idea of making the receiving club give up their first round pick (or whateva the player is worth) for a FA.

Players nominating clubs certainly isn't new. It use to be internal and only conerned the relevant clubs, but now it just gets more media attention these days.

And player input regarding coaches has also always been around. Clubs will always heavily consider the core players input regarding coaches. Again just the media blowing it up

[GoLions]

and don't mind that idea of making the receiving club give up their first round pick (or whateva the player is worth) for a FA.

I don't.

Let's say Beams was a FA this year. Gets judged as being a round 1 pick. Hawks, the Grand Final winners, would have to give up pick 18. Then let's use the Lions here, we'd have to give up pick 4 for him. This makes it even more of an advantage for the top clubs IMO.

[Ricochet]

and don't mind that idea of making the receiving club give up their first round pick (or whateva the player is worth) for a FA.

I don't.

Let's say Beams was a FA this year. Gets judged as being a round 1 pick. Hawks, the Grand Final winners, would have to give up pick 18. Then let's use the Lions here, we'd have to give up pick 4 for him. This makes it even more of an advantage for the top clubs IMO.

Yeh good point mate. Have also seen talk around of further splitting the first band of compo. So Melb get  a pick around the 10ish mark rather than a top 3 for Frawley

[j959]

I do like the idea of not making it as inequitable for players where they nominate that they want to go to 'destination' clubs.
so some sort of 'deemed pick' would be good but GL's example makes sense to me and it would have unfairly penalised Bris in this example ... so a fairer work-around should be looked at ...

I just think, we don't want an EPL situation where generally only the top-4 money teams (eg ManU 'I spit on you') are pretty much the only ones with a chance of taking the premiership ...

Free Agency has been around for ages in US pro sports and the teams just have to work it out - ie if you want to keep your player, you extend the guy's contract before you get close to them being able to walk as a FA the next year or one after that.

the coach-sackings will be limited as a money-issue with all the contract breaking going on - to me, if a board wants to waste their team's funds/finances and terminate a coach early then that's up to them and they'll be accountable to their members and to some extent the AFL if it is a mis-management of funds ... or as I've heard with McKenna's they had some early termination clauses (not sure if they/that was/were results/incentive based)

players nominating which clubs they want to go to, just changes the bargaining leverage between clubs - ie you have a player that has done essentially nothing and with little potential, probably won't be wanted by the nominated club anyway, so you're essentially talking about a supply/demand (ie 'free-market') situation so I wouldn't have any problem with that (apart from the destination club/de-equalisation thing) ...

also, I found Terry Wallace's comments/insinuation that Freo management/footy dept should take a hard look at themselves for not being able to land a big-name FA in the last few seasons being some sign they couldn't get deals done as laughable.

clear fact is, very few non-WA FAs want to do the fortnightly travel, which to me illustrates how much of a disadvantage it is for WCE/Freo and just not fully appreciated/accepted by Vic-based clubs ...