SEN Breakfast co-host Tim Watson has confirmed reports that the AFL will introduce a pre-season trade window.
The AFL has been touting a mid-season trade period after the success of this year’s mid-season draft, but that has been scrapped in favour of a window to open before Round 1.
The Age floated the possibility on Tuesday night, but Watson believes it will indeed happen next year.
“The mid-season trade period is going to become the pre-season trade,” Watson told SEN Breakfast.
“There’ll be a 48 to 72-hour window that will open just before the season, I’m not exactly sure what the dates are going to be, but there will be a window that opens when those trades can occur.
“It won’t happen during the year, it won’t happen mid-season, it’ll happen in the pre-season.
“It will happen according to my people.
“When the clubs met, all the CEO’s, there was opposition, they didn’t like the mid-season draft.
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan told Sportsday last night that an out-of-season trade period would exist to help clubs move depth players, not stars.
“I think what’s clear is it wouldn’t be anything that would enable star players to be shopped around,” he said.
“Maybe it would be earlier in the year … I might need a ruckman coming into the season or half way through the season and you’ve got a surplus, but it won’t be something – what the strong feedback is from football is they don’t want something that gives an opportunity for star players (to move) or clubs under pressure to be put in poor positions.”