The 2024 Trade Period Day 1

HPN will be covering this AFL Trade Period with daily posts, as a roundup or with progressive updates through the day. Watch for updates on social media.

It may still be a public holiday in half the country, but that hasn’t stopped the trade period beginning in earnest.

Welcome to HPN’s coverage of the 2024 AFL trade period, where we attempt to use projections of future value for picks and players to assess the goals and risks for each club in the trades that are set to unfold.

The Crows nab Alex Neal-Bullen

Alex Neal-Bullen will be 29 next season and is probably best described as an accomplished role-player.

The South Australian won the coaches award at Melbourne as a premiership player. Importantly, he has missed one game in the last four seasons, playing 96 of a possible 97 in that time.

Neal-Bullen is typically found in the front half of the ground playing unsexy roles, keeping a dangerous rebound defender accountable or helping hold shape and create space for others to operate in. Last year he was increasingly deployed for soft tag or run-with roles – with limited success. He’s very much a spacing, defensive first option.

There’s no reason to think he won’t serve a similar support function at Adelaide as they look to craft their setup around Fogarty and Thilthorpe and some very offensive minded mid-forwards in years to come.

The trade turns out to value mid-level durability fairly respectfully. Neal-Bullen might be expected to turn out about four more seasons similar to his previous four, and that just happens to hit pretty close to the career output expected of the second round pick he’s been swapped for. Both sides will be satisfied.

Verdict: Fair Trade.

Jack Darling brings some experience to the Kangaroos

When Alistair Clarkson, never a senior coach who has been shy to dictate list-management strategy to his football department, announced mid season that the club would be trading for old, experienced players to complement his raw charges, he dropped several names. Well credentialed players like Luke Parker and Ollie Wines came quickly, but he suggested that there would be others.

The idea seems sound enough. North Melbourne’s list lacks older heads, with only five players who will have turned 26 by the end of this calendar year. For those wondering Jy Simpkin is probably the pick of them.

Without knowing the internal details of the club’s culture and standards, it’s quite likely that the club at large do see a genuine need for older players just to provide support, leadership and standards around the clubroom and training oval and maybe take some pressure off the likes of Simpkin and McDonald.

So it makes sense that West Coast is sending North a contracted, and probably still well-paid former star in Jack Darling. His cap hit shouldn’t be an issue for North, but the space is likely something the Eagles are keen on to clear their books for future years. If they can front load their contracts to fill the vacant space, they can more easily shape their key forward future around Oscar Allen and Jake Waterman.

Darling is 33 and his output has declined annually for several years now. If he stays fit, even at his current reduced level of performance, he should provide a modest foil to the incredibly Larkey-centric North Melbourne forward line.

Larkey has been just about the most targeted player inside 50 in the competition despite North’s typical dearth of entries, so nearly any level of Darling presence and craft should at least stretch defences a little more, and make life a little easier for Nick Larkey beyond what North have been trying to do with improvised stopgaps like Toby Pink.

The one concern with Darling has been size, with Darling never being the tallest of options up forward. That robs him of one standard old KPF trick as he ages, and puts a greater reliance on his ability to lead and cannonball through packs.

Darling may not play more than his final contracted season and may find himself in an off-field leadership position sooner rather than later. Even onfield it may be his indirect impact on the output of other forwards that is his main contribution. The late pick is a pretty minimal valuation of these minimal expectations. and West Coast will mostly care about the cap relief regardless.

Verdict: Low value trade based on low expectations.

Note: This post is part of a series of posts using a valuation method called Player Approximate Value (PAV) to evaluate trades for fairness and balance. Readers can explore these values with tools such as the HPN Trade Calculator to evaluate potential trades.

Elsewhere, read much more about the method and theory behind PAVExpressing the value of players and picks in terms of expected future PAV provides a common currency for comparing them in trades and other movements. Players are projected using PAPLEY, a method to derive expected future PAVs.

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