Nick Daicos and Sam Darcy shine show why father-sons have to cost more

N. Daicos and Darcy are the current players who encapsulate the inadequacies of the father-son rule, which is due to be reformed into one that forces clubs to pay a fairer price for their genetic endowments.

On Friday night, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan also showed his talents as he was coached by Collingwood skipper and yet another son of a big club, Darcy Moore – one of the few AFL defenders with the traits to successfully defend the future version Darcy’s. .

The Pies calculated that their Darcy was needed for Ugle-Hagan, who the Dogs were gifted with the temporary bounty of a next-generation academy (for indigenous and multicultural players) that allowed them to land Jamarra at pick one, in while trading with Adam Treloar. following the Collingwood salary cap fire sale.

The influence and specter of father-sons and academy players – particularly the northern iterations of Sydney and the Gold Coast – is one of the dominant stories of 2024.

No club, bar Geelong, has prospered as much as Collingwood and the Doggies from father-son rule, while the Swans’ academy has featured the likes of Isaac Heeney, Errol Gulden, Nick Blakey and Callum Mills. Gold Coast (finally) hit the jackpot with four academy players last year, two of whom are senior A-grades (Jed Walter and Ethan Read).

Clubs that missed the boat want a reformed system, and even those that have cleaned up – including the Cats and Pies – believe the system needs to change, as it will by assessing the AFL’s competitive balance. The AFL has indicated that the rules will become fairer.

The AFL is committed to retaining the academy, north and NGA system, and there is no agenda to destroy the father-son rule (or the father-daughter, mother-daughter and mother-son variants). And there shouldn’t be either. In an increasingly homogenized competition, seeing the sons of the former faithful is a necessary concession to tribalism.

But while clubs agree the change is needed, what should the new rules become?

Several comments from clubs on this topic argued that a first-round pick should be the price paid for a high-value father-son or academy player, via the auction system, and that the auction/arcane points system – which allows clubs to procure recruits with a host of further routes – to be reformed or scrapped.

Collingwood, for example, matched a bid for Nick Daicos at pick four, using picks 38, 40, 42 and 44 to reach the required spots. The Dogs did the same with Ugle-Hagan and Darcy after offers at picks one and two, respectively. The Pies unwisely traded their 2021 first pick (No. 2) to 2020 knowing the Daicos were coming and would have felt like bandits if they kept that pick and had a double tilt.

In reviewing the rules, the AFL’s priority should and is likely to be to stop exploiting the points system – described as “ridiculous” by recruiters – which sees first-round picks dealt and sold as junk bonds so you can secure a father son/gun academy and keep a first round (usually a future one). Or use the first round to trade a decent player.

The AFL could also allow clubs to match top 20 bids for NGA players again after the review.

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Collingwood and former Hawthorn head of football Graham Wright (who is on leave) and Geelong’s head of recruitment Stephen Wells long ago mooted the idea that a club should use a pick in the same round, or one of the nine selections of the offer for father…son/recruit academy.

The Cats would not have had access to Joel Selwood in the same year as Tom Hawkins (2006) in that scenario if the rule had been in place.

Another alternative proposed by Wright/Wells was that the first two picks could be used up if the offer was high enough, while one option the clubs have offered is that a high offer must be matched with a pick from the first round that year or the following year.

Whatever the AFL decides, the overriding principle must be that the players who shape the game – those who win finals and flags – don’t get a huge cut, and that the draft’s equalizing goal cannot be overturned because a club has a good set of genes or a academy that produces weapons.

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