The Lies of the Trade Period Industrial Complex (TPIC)

The Lies of the Trade Period Industrial Complex (TPIC)

GuyWhoLikesSport

We are right in the middle of the trade period, but truly not much gets done before the end of the week anyway.

In that spirit, before the silly season truly begins it’s worth looking at a few lessons from trade periods gone by.

On the way to those lessons, indulge me in a tangentially related thought if you wouldn’t mind.

I watched Memento again the other day.

I don’t love Chris Nolan, but that one is clearly my favourite of his movies including Oppenheimer.

I’m not sure how he managed to fit his fetish with time into a historical epic, but he did.

I guess if Steven May can be as wilfully ignorant as he is then anything is possible.

The first thought I had was “Wow, Nolan really has had a thing for dead or dying brunette wives from the start. Wonder if his mum was brunette?” I quickly moved on from that one before I cracked open the Freud books.

The second thought I had was that we could really apply the Memento tattoo principle to footy.

The tattoo should say, simply, “Winning the trade period doesn’t always lead to winning on the field”.

If you wanted to go full prison break you could also add a tattoo that says “Trade week and the complex around it is a cynical way for the AFL to NBA/NFL itself and become a 10-month a-year sport and it’s a matter of time before the draft combine is televised”.

Bit wordy?

As a Richmond fan, I’m aware of this phenomenon after we “won” the trade period by signing Hopper and Taranto.

Obviously, the Tigers missed finals and now find ourselves with the Golden State problem of being stuck between eras in almost every area of the list except for the two mids that we paid extraordinary cap and capital for.

My thought was to go through all of the “winners and losers” articles from afl.com.au from when the truly silly trade period chatter really started.

I have termed this phenomenon the Trade Period Industrial Complex (TPIC).

The TPIC discusses hypothetical trades ad nauseam, eventually speaking them into legitimate rumours based on nothing but speculation (if trade radio is the CIA then Clayton Oliver trade speculation is their MK Ultra).

The other facet of the TPIC is to agonise over marginal moves and making them seem enormously consequential for October before ultimately being forgotten about in March.

Never forget when Orazio Fantasia was once treated like he was Anthony Davis.

Is Mabior Chol the missing piece for Hawthorn? Probably not.

Could Ben McKay turn Essendon into the AFL’s equivalent of the ’85 Bears? No.

The TPIC, in my view, started when Adam Treloar picked Collingwood over Richmond.

That was agonised over on trade radio, and more ink was spilt on Treloar’s comment that “Collingwood was closer to a premiership than Richmond” than almost anything else that offseason.

To be honest, the power of the TPIC was such that I was annoyed about that Treloar comment right up until he was victimised by Nathan Buckley and Collingwood.

That happened after the 2015 season, so that’s where we’re starting.

I finished with 2021 because we don’t have a full picture of the success or failure of the 2022 trade period.

The parameters of the gimmick are simple.

Any club’s trade period that was adjudged one of the best or one of the worst would be included.

I used only the “winners and losers” type column from afl.com.au for consistency.

Afl.com.au didn’t do winners and losers in 2021 so I looked at Fox Footy’s.

The two teams that figure most prominently in the “best” column are St Kilda and Essendon who appeared 4 and 3 times, respectively.

My personal favourites are the victory lap that Essendon did when they nabbed Dylan Shiel for only 2 first-round picks in 2018 and the Saints being able to snare “A-grade wingman” Brad Hill in 2019.

Ask a Bombers fans what he thinks of Shiel at the start of a long drive and you won’t need a podcast.

Between them, those two clubs have made two finals series over the seven years of the exercise and have won a combined one final.

Richmond figured in the “best” only once – when they added Lynch.

This year’s premier Collingwood figured in the “worst” three times and in the “best” only once while Geelong were in the “best” once and the “worst” once

North Melbourne was in the best once and the worst once. West Coast only ever figured in the “best” doing so twice.

Those teams combined for 6 wins this season.

A second favourite, that I can’t help but mention, was Geelong being a loser for getting the consolation prize Zach Tuohy instead of Brett Deledio.

Conversely, GWS were a big winner because they were able to snatch Deledio.

I’m not saying that the TPIC is always wrong, however. In fact, they usually make their layups.

Adding superstars is just about the only surefire way to win the trade period and eventually win on the field.

Richmond, for instance, has lain at both sides of that coin, adding in a superstar at a premium position like Lynch in 2018 led to on-field winning.

Adding mere stars in non-premium positions like Hopper and Taranto have, up to this point, not.

And I’m not trying to be snarky here or a genius in hindsight.

The point that I’m trying to make is that we can guess and prognosticate on any manner of things, but declaring a trade offseason good or bad before the draft and before any games are played is a foolish errand.

I understand that the TPIC demands it, and I understand that it has to be done, but I reserve the right to make fun of it.