Opinion: Ashley Browne

What I’m thinking

with Ashley Browne

Play the mid-year trade game

While the Mid-Season Draft has made a welcome return, mid-season trading would be a win-win for all clubs.

There are a few reasons why a mid-season trade period in the AFL makes all the sense in the world. And it starts with some stories from yesteryear.

Before there was a draft and before there was a trade period (with its own radio station!), it was open slather.

Players could be traded, or cleared as it was known, between one club and another any time between the end of one season and June 30 of the next.

In-season trading used to be the norm.

In 1979, Hawthorn coach David Parkin decided that premiership midfielder Barry Rowlings would never adequately recover from a knee reconstruction the year before, so he packed him off to Richmond … the week of a game between the Hawks and Tigers.

Hawthorn won the game, but Rowlings ended up winning Richmond’s best and fairest that season and was a premiership player 12 months later while Parkin eventually lost his job.

Melbourne sold champion midfielder Greg Wells to Carlton the same week the two clubs played each other in 1980.

Wells never played in a final with the Demons in 10 seasons, but did so within two months of donning the navy blue jumper. One year later, he too was a premiership player.

Russell Greene’s famous Thursday night trade from St Kilda to Hawthorn also took place two months into the 1980 season.

He ended up a triple premiership player for the Hawks and is in the club’s Hall of Fame.

In 1982, Michael Byrne moved to the Hawks during the season after falling out with Melbourne coach Ron Barassi.

He kicked eight goals on debut and later played in a premiership while his former club continued to wallow.

There was a bit of a common theme to the in-season trading in the old VFL; it was the powerful clubs plundering the weaker clubs with the promise of some much-needed cash to help balance their books.

Don’t forget that through much of the 1970s and early 1980s, more than half the League clubs were close to insolvent.

Mid-season trading is back firmly on the AFL agenda.

In the past few years, the League has added new player movement mechanisms such as the PSS (pre-season supplemental selection period) and the Mid-Season Draft, which took place earlier this week.

Adding a trade period for a few days in the middle of the season would appear to be the final piece of the puzzle.

The landscape has entirely changed. If it was to be introduced, there would no fleecing by one club of the other.

Clubs are smarter, more financial and recognise that the AFL would instantly nix any deal that fails to pass the pub test.

In theory, mid-season trading should be welcomed.

West Coast’s premiership window is now firmly shut. The rest of us had our suspicions, but now the club is on board when it comes to the need to rebuild.

But having not had many early draft picks in recent years, largely as a by-product of the Tim Kelly trade, what chance they would send Jeremy McGovern to a team in premiership contention, say Carlton, in exchange for an early draft pick that would fast-track retooling of the list?

With his brother Mitch and, now, Jacob Weitering missing through injury, McGovern would immediately become one of the most important players at the Blues.

North Melbourne is also in the midst of a rebuild. The more draft picks it can lay its hands on, the better. Imagine sending Todd Goldstein to the Blues to cover for the loss of Marc Pittonet or as insurance against any more of their big men getting injured.

Sooner than expected, Carlton’s premiership window is open and, in an ideal world, the Blues would have experienced depth players in every part of the ground.

One argument against mid-season trading is that it may result in too many dead rubbers in the second half of the season as well as more non-competitive games.

But the reality is that by July of every season, there are teams that are eliminated from finals contention who already have their eyes on list management and the following season.

Would trading out an experienced player in the middle of the season make any more difference than the common practice of shutting down players for the year and sending them in for early surgery to get a head start on the next season?

Mid-season trading won’t do much to alter the competitive balance of an AFL season.

It is a helpful list management tool for the bottom clubs that also has the potential to make the battle for the premiership that bit more exciting.

There is a time and a place for it in the modern AFL.

ADDED DEPTH:

Experienced players, such as Eagle Jeremy McGovern, would be possible targets for clubs in premiership contention if mid-season trading was introduced.