Just how did the AFL arrive at the view that North Melbourne needed priority draft assistance last year?
George Wardlaw got the nod as the Round 2 Rising Star nomination - George is a second year player, a top five draft pick and an absolute ripper. You can add him to Harry Sheezel, Jy Simpkin and Luke Davies-Uniacke as players from the North Melbourne midfield who were in place prior to last year’s national draft.
You can then add the highly rated Colby McKercher and Zane Duursma as top five picks who joined the club during that draft.
When the Kangaroos were running all over Fremantle in the early going at Marvel Stadium on Saturday, a commentator - Jonathan Brown no less - declared that the Roos had the best centre square engine room in the AFL last year.
So the best centre square midfield in the AFL - a midfield that kicks to Nick Larkey who booted 71 goals last year, with Cam Zurhaar lurking in support as a hybrid forward - somehow deserves priority draft picks?
North’s list at the time they got that draft aid package was a minimum two years ahead of West Coast’s list. It is now three or possibly four years ahead.
And I can hear the East Coasters saying, 'yeah but West Coast are big and wealthy and they won’t have their existence threatened by a few years at the bottom of the ladder'.
It’s a spurious argument because of the AFL’s variable funding model, which props up Greater Western Sydney and Gold Coast so the game can be expanded also allocates extra money to Melbourne based clubs who may face financial difficulty.
Under that model in 2023 North Melbourne received about $18-19 million from the AFL in 2023 - or between $8-9 million more than the Eagles who received little more than $10 million.
"Just how did the @AFL arrive at the view that @NMFCOfficial needed priority draft assistance last year?"@MarkDuffield1 tries to get his head around the help the #AFL gave the Kangaroos & if they needed it.@SENWestAus | @AFLNation pic.twitter.com/AHyyYt2jPa
— SEN WA Mornings (@SENWAMornings) March 26, 2024
And smaller cross town rival Fremantle fared little better than the Eagles, their $11.5-12.5 million last year putting them in the bottom half of clubs for AFL funding and a good $7-8 million adrift of North.
North Melbourne and St Kilda received the same amount of AFL funding last year as frontier state team Brisbane.
So the argument that North need priority draft assistance to guarantee its future is rubbish. If they lose money, the AFL will increase their funding to them to guarantee the number of teams in the competition and the number of games available to broadcasters.
The AFL has effectively handed North Melbourne a top eight list on a two-year time delay.
North has plenty of talent and not all of the talent is young. Davies-Uniacke is the same age as Andrew Brayshaw and Adam Cerra - taken in the same draft behind Brayshaw but ahead of Cerra in the top five. Jy Simpkin is older than Davies-Uniacke. Larkey, already considered one of the premier power forwards in the AFL, made the All-Australian team last year.
Personally I don’t like prioritised draft assistance. The draft exists - it is an equalisation measure. If it is used properly it eventually brings bottom teams closer to top ones.
But if the AFL is going to be handing out draft assistance like confetti at a wedding, West Coast definitely should be putting their hand out for assistance at the end of this season.
The Eagles have less young talent than North and they have more older players going off the end in a year or two.
And those of you that know me know that Freo is my favourite team, not the Eagles.