Melbourne captain Daisy Pearce has explained how Sydney outsmarted the system during last night’s National Draft.
The Swans traded pick 26 to West Coast for a future third-round pick, before receiving pick 24 from the Eagles in exchange for a future second-round pick later in the night.
In the end, the Swans essentially kept their second-round pick in this year’s draft, while the Eagles got a pick upgrade next year.
Why make this move? Pearce broke down the genius of the shuffling of picks.
“What’s happened here is someone smarter than us has come in and said hey, there’s a little loophole here in a way you can get Nick Blakey cheaply,” Pearce told SEN Breakfast.
“Whenever there’s a father-son pick, you have to match the bid with points, everyone’s clear on that.
“Sydney have done the maths and worked out they’re going to need a certain amount of points and have the picks to match that.
“Once it got to pick seven, they realised it wasn’t going to cost them as many points as they had.
“Even if a bid comes on Blakey thereafter, you still have to give up your next best pick. You can’t hold onto to that and get the points elsewhere.
“So what they did at that point when there had been no bid on Blakey at seven, they traded out their next best pick which was pick 26 because they said we can still get him now based on his points beyond pick seven.
“So they shipped pick 26 off to West Coast in exchange for a 2019 third-round pick, the bid then came for Blakey at 10 and they had enough points for that.
“Then they went back to West Coast and said we’ll have that second-rounder back now, so they got 24 from West Coast and gave them a second-round pick.
“So in the wash-up, they’ve gotten Blakey pretty cheaply and all that’s really happened is West Coast’s swapped their third round pick for a second round pick next year.
“What’s Sydney’s done is outsmart the system and park their pick elsewhere while they got Blakey.”