What is the deal with the AFL Trade Period?

What is the deal with the AFL Trade Period?

GuyWhoLikesSport

Cue the Seinfeld theme, “What is the deal with the AFL trade period, I don’t get it”

Or, as is the style of my writing, here’s another pop-cultural reference:

Betteridge’s rule of headlines says “”Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

This one can’t, Betteridge. Loser.

In a way, though, he’s right. You just need add a suffix to the word no. Which suffix? Body.

The AFL trade period isn’t really for anyone.

I have no idea why stretching over 10 days is necessary for the clubs when they are presumably in trade talks all year long, given the concept of tampering doesn’t appear to have infiltrated the AFL parlance. I particularly think this given every trade seems to get done on the last two days.

The fans tend to find it more boring than getting up in arms about a well-paid politician buying an expensive house.

Some might say it’s about selling hope to the fans, but I’m not sure I buy that given the level of player that generally gets moved.

If a fan of West Coast thinks that Matt Owies is going to change the Eagles’ fortunes, please put me in touch with them as I have a terrific marketing opportunity for them.

They just need to sign up 25 people to start making passive income!

And by the end of Trade Radio, even the on-air personalities sound like they’re sizing up Adam Cooney as he comes up with another convoluted 15 team trade that will see Harry McKay leave Carlton for Charlie Spargo and a box of cheds.

Last year I wrote a column about what I call the “Trade Period Industrial Complex” where I essentially said that, unless an A+ superstar player is traded then not much of this will matter.

The best two players traded were Shai Bolton and Dan Houston. I like both of them, but they are not Jeremy Cameron or Patty Dangerfield irrespective of what the trade grades say.

So, back to the original question. Who is it actually for?

If it’s not for the clubs or the fans, and even trade radio seems annoyed by itself come the tenth day.

I think that the most incisive cynic among those of you who read this column would say that it’s mostly for money, which is always a terrific point and congratulations to you for making it, comrade.

I think that it goes beyond just money, because if money was the answer this would be a much shorter column.

It seems to me to be mostly for airtime. And I resent how dull that airtime is.

The Age Real Footy podcast, which I genuinely enjoy because of how gossipy it is even if it very seldom talks about a ball being kicked, does two episodes a week during the season. One is a review of the games and moreso what’s happening at “Board level” in “clubland” and the other is a tipping podcast.

On trade period they have daily episodes.

Why? For the first eight episodes of the trade period, there’s a lot of discussion about whether the club is hesitant to part with a pick that they will inevitably part with on day nine or ten.

Sometimes, when you get incompetence like we saw from West Coast, who traded pick 3 for virtually nothing when they could have just kept pick 3 and not played footsie with Hawthorn there’s something to talk about.

But more often than not, it’s just a way to put out a few more podcasts.

That’s fine, you have to do what you have to do, but the problem is there just isn’t enough excitement to have this kind of saturation around the product.

What makes the NBA and NFL offseasons great is that their trade and free agency periods are exciting. The free agency window opens when the new league year starts and Adam Schefter releases his drafts where he says that X player is moving to Y team for untold millions.

That’s good fun and we can all debate whether it was smart to hand Gabe Davis 3 years and $39,000,000.

Even today, as I’m writing this column, the NFL had two seismic trades occur. Davante Adams was traded by the Raiders to the Jets, which almost everyone saw coming, and Amari Cooper was traded by the Browns to the Bills, which nobody saw coming.

The fact that the Cooper deal had the element of surprise is what makes NFL transactions fun.

It’s the same in the NBA. Even the players themselves are often surprised by being traded.

The AFL has no element of surprise.

Players are never traded without their consent, and almost always pick the location. Sometimes, someone like Houston will say he wants to be in Victoria but not nominate a club, but more often than not you have a player like Bailey Smith saying he’ll only be traded to Geelong.

I understand that there are different financial realities in the NFL and the NBA to the AFL. Amari Cooper signed a $100,000,0000 contract in 2020, while the AFL reserves those payouts for the executive.

Even the best paid AFL players make just a fraction of that, so it makes trading them without consent a more difficult proposition. Fair enough.

But it doesn’t change the fact that the trade period doesn’t seem to be for anyone.

Fans find it dull. I can’t fathom why clubs would need it. And even if media wants it to fill up airtime and have people talking about footy, they also seem bored and frustrated by it all at the end.

Given all of that, please make the trade period shorter or longer.

Let it stretch into the season or have it run over three days and let clubs tamper. I can’t do another Adam Cooney mega-deal.

I can’t.

 

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