It is that time of the year again where clubs try and pull the wool over each other by over inflating their duds and second tier players and fans dream up stupid trades of trading out four or five duds for a star from an opposition club. Even the newspaper reporters get a little silly like for example thinking West Coast would target another forward/ ruckmen in Clarke when they have one of the tallest lists in the AFL already. So why do they do this? One reason and that is because we want to see action and players traded instead of just listening to speculation all week.

Brad Ebert has asked to be traded to Port Adelaide but will it happen? What can be done about the AFL trade period which is usually a non-event after so much build up and hype?

First of all its stupid to think clubs are as dumb as North Melbourne after loosing Wayne Carey in the early 200′s when they traded for Hey/ Thompson and who can forget the madness of Fremantle with the names they lost is a list of A graders on AFL players in McLeod, Hodge, Ottens, Lloyd, Lucas etc. Clubs have smarten up and you cannot pull the wool over another anymore…

The next issue is that clubs think the only way to get to a Grand Final/ Premiership is through the draft which means the first round of drafts are worth their weight in gold and everyone wants an extra pick and not prepared to realistically give something for one.

The third issue is that clubs over rate their players. For example no way is Bradley Ebert from West Coast Eagles worth Port Adelaide’s #6 pick – he was left out of the finals side for a reason. He is worth a #10-20 but Port does not have a pick in that period.

These issues see us the fans and newspaper reporters coming up with stupid ideas/ rumours and trade suggestions. What is needed is a reshape/ rethink of the trade period from the AFL clubs but also from the AFL. 2010 saw nearly 30 trades which is four times the normal amount of past seasons – yes the new clubs was a main reason but this was because they had access to pre listed/ nominated players and the ability to onward trade them. We will see it again for the 2011 trade period with GWS but what about 2012 onwards?

I think the AFL looks at this solution were instead of getting priority picks they can select one player each and then either ontrade it to another club or keep him for their own club. Yes it will mean we may need to get rid of the pre season draft (which is almost extinct anyway) and or have a pre Trade draft where the clubs who have won less than 5 wins can select a player.

This could be a solution but I think it will be better than the AFL pinning their hopes of Free Agency. What do you think? Do you have a better solution or do we just keep it the same and leave the game alone? Or do the clubs just play ball and be realistic?

Please note: We apologise for the Website being down, it was due to a WordPress installation error but we are up and running now.

Be Sociable, Share!

•