The priority draft pick is a type of draft selection in the Australian Football League's AFL Draft. Priority draft picks are additional draft picks, located at or near the start of the draft, which are given only to the poorest performing teams, to provide additional help for those teams to improve on-field performances in future years.
The priority draft pick has been the consistent subject of controversy, as several poor-performing teams have been accused of tanking during the later part of the season to ensure that they qualify for the additional draft pick.
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At the conclusion of each AFL season, there are three AFL drafts: the National Draft, the Pre-Season Draft and the Rookie Draft. The National Draft is the most important of the drafts, as it is the primary recruitment method for prospective young players once they reach the age of 18.
In the draft, the selections are arranged into rounds, with each team having one selection per round. Selections in each round are arranged in reverse ladder position order.
Under current AFL rules, a clubs becomes eligible for a priority draft pick in the National Draft if it finishes a season with fewer than 16.5 premiership points. As such, a team with a record no better than 4–18 (or 3–16–2), from the current season length of 22 matches is eligible for a priority draft pick; a team with a record of 4–17–1 is not eligible.
The location of the priority draft picks within the overall National Draft depends upon the team's performance over the previous two years.
Another way to describe this is that in a sequence of consecutive poor seasons, the priority draft pick in the first season is taken after the first round, and subsequent priority draft picks are taken before the first round.
Where more than one team participates in the same round of priority picks, selections are made reverse ladder position order, as is the case for normal rounds.
The draft was established in 1986 to attempt to reduce the inherent unevenness of the league under zoning, where some teams (such as Carlton, Hawthorn, Essendon, Collingwood) were perennially successful, and others (such as St Kilda, Fitzroy and Footscray) were perennially unsuccessful. The draft was intended to give the weakest teams access to the best prospective players.
By 1993, weak teams were still enduring prolonged unsuccessful periods, so the priority draft pick was introduced to further assist these teams. In its first incarnation:
In the early 2000s, it became apparent that a team with reasonable prospects could have an isolated poor season through injuries or other off-field trouble and finish with five wins, thus 'inappropriately' receiving a player-list boosting priority draft pick. This was deemed to be unfair, as the initial raison d'être of the priority picks was solely to help consistently poor teams to rebuild. As a consequence, the rules were changed to their current form, starting with the 2006 draft.
The priority draft pick has become controversial because of the potential for corruption. There is annual speculation that poorer performing teams manipulate their results after they are eliminated from finals contention, in order to ensure they remain below the 16.5 point eligibility criterion and receive a priority pick; this is referred to as "tanking."[1]
There are a wide variety of behaviours which could be considered to be tanking. These include:
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. This complicates the debate about tanking.
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;[4] 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.[3]
In addition to the allusions to corruption, tanking has the significant issue that fans of poor performing clubs sometimes openly support against their teams on match-day.[2] The legal implications of tanking on sports betting is also a significant problem,[5] and in 2009 a betting agency suspended betting on the wooden spoon when it became concerned about the potential legal ramifications if tanking or corruption were ever proven.[1]
In 2006, by shifting the Priority Round from before to after the First Round, the AFL reduced the incentive to tank, but did not eliminate it. Some members of the media, particularly from the Herald Sun, call frequently for the priority draft pick to be scrapped altogether, and some even call for a draft lottery to be applied in the first round. AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou has maintained that the AFL supports the continuation of the priority system,[2] and has the endorsement of the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation that the integrity of the game is sufficiently protected.[1] The AFL Players Association's official position is 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.[6]
In 2011, sacked Melbourne coach Dean Bailey stated that he coached to "ensure the club was well placed for draft picks" in 2008 and 2009, and admitted to playing players in unusual positions, but he never claimed that the team had deliberately lost matches.[1] Tony Liberatore made similar statements in 2008, when he claimed that he felt like "winning wasn't the be all and end all" when Carlton received a priority pick in 2007; but, he also said that he'd never seen anything to suggest that players were deliberately losing matches.[3] In both cases, the statements were seen as an admission of guilt to tanking by some, but (in the absence of an explicit directive to throw matches) acceptable by others.[1]
The Round 22, 2007 match between Carlton and Melbourne, known as the Kreuzer Cup, was the most controversial match in the tanking debate. It was the last match of the year, and both Carlton and Melbourne had a record of 4–17, meaning that whichever team won the match would lose the chance at a priority draft pick. Both clubs had already avoided the ignominy of the wooden spoon (Richmond had secured it with a final record of 3–18–1). Overall, this meant that there was no benefit for either club to win, but a significant benefit to losing.
The stakes were particularly high in Carlton's case, because the club had also received a priority pick in the 2006 season; as such, if it lost this match, it would receive the No. 1 draft pick as its priority pick. In Melbourne's case, the priority pick it could have received was be the No. 18 pick; the No. 1 pick would have gone to wooden spooners Richmond had Melbourne lost the match. The match became known as the Kreuzer Cup, named after Northern Knights' ruckman Matthew Kreuzer, who had been expected to be selected with the No. 1 pick in the 2007 AFL Draft.
The match was high scoring, played with low intensity, poor skills and very little defensive pressure. Two players (Carlton's Heath Scotland and Melbourne's Travis Johnstone) gathered more than 40 disposals. In addition, the crowd of 26,156 was subdued, and there were reports of fans openly supporting against their own teams. In the end, Melbourne had a five goal lead by quarter time, and ended up winning 21.13 (139) to 15.18 (108). Carlton went on to recruit Kreuzer with the No. 1 pick in the draft.[7]
Melbourne entered the match with a record of 3–14. Because it had received a priority draft pick in 2008, it had the potential to receive a priority draft pick at the start of the draft if won no more than one of its final five matches.
The match was close for much of the game, but Melbourne kicked away to lead by a few goals in the final quarter. Richmond was then able to make a come-back, and an after-the-siren goal by Jordan McMahon gave Richmond a four-point win. The Herald Sun later accused coach Melbourne coach Dean Bailey of making positional changes in the final quarter which were so nonsensical that they could only have been designed to ensure Richmond would make a comeback: this included moving key defenders James Frawley and Matthew Warnock into the forward-line, resting key midfielders, and using Brad Miller as a ruckman for the first time in his career.[8]