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.
With today set to be hectic, HPN will be trying to keep up with the moves as they drop. Check back periodically or watch on Twitter to get the latest analysis.
Shai Bolton takes the purple
The first final day domino to fall was Shai Bolton’s move to Fremantle. Bolton is probably the most valuable player to move in this trade period. Of the mooted names he has the highest projected future career value under HPN’s PAPLEY projections as well as a near-AA quality projected value for 2025 specifically.
He is in the prime of his career and stands to bolster the Dockers midfield and/or forward setup immediately, depending on how they decide to make the fit work. He is much more an attacking weapon than a defensive structure player, excellent in all facets of the contested game – marking, stoppages, general play.
That makes him a weapon out of stoppages when he and his team can win the ball. Out in space his 1v1 contest work and goal sense also serve him well.
Richmond valued his flexibility across all parts of the ground from the centre circle to the goal square, the question is how Fremantle will deploy him into a well-established young midfield and already dangerous smaller forward mix.
The trade is almost as well balanced as could ever be expected with four first rounders changing hands. Fremantle have given up two first rounders but gotten back a third rounder that is likely to fall no later than 40 once bid matching picks are eaten up next year. They’ve also dropped out of holding the first Western Australian pick, which with Bo Allan lurking around the mark, is something Richmond likely coordinated to make the Baker trade more appealing to the Eagles.
The Dockers paid a fair price, the trade values him somewhere around pick 5. They get a very good player for probably over half a decade and hold a spot in the first round of this draft. The task now is using him to potential in their pursuit of a first flag.
Verdict: Fair trade for the likely most valuable player to move this year.
Rioli trades the Yarra for the Nerang
Now a settled defender, Daniel Rioli will move to Gold Coast where he will reunite with Damien Hardwick as the latter makes his stamp on the list management and gameplan of the Suns.
Rioli should slot in immediately as an effective ball user in what was a roughly average team last year at scoring from the defensive half.
The Suns have had some versatile and useful players contribute in this role, notably Lachie Weller when fit and Sam Flanders this year, but they have also tried a variety of players such as Rory Atkins and Alex Sexton to more limited success. Rioli comes in familiar with Hardwick’s coaching and likely to provide a ball movement upgrade for the Suns. He may also allow the partial redeployment of the likes of the highly fancied Flanders.
John Noble will likely also be targeting a role in this mix, as will a couple of their younger charges.
The trade shows starkly the different economy the Suns are working in where they can undervalue top picks and are interested mostly in bid matching points.
This trade comes out as reasonably balanced due to the exchange of four late picks which Richmond were almost certain not to use, but which the Suns need to help match for Leo Lombard. The headline of two good picks including pick 6 for Rioli is of course far less balanced.
As it stands, HPN believes that the group of picks the Suns hold can match a bid of around pick 6 for Lombard, assuming they find a way to into the draft with at least 4 or 5 list spots to enable them to use all the picks.
It may be asked why the Suns couldn’t hold pick 6 and hope to match for Lombard with the rest of their draft hand, but it seems unlikely the Tigers would have settled for not nabbing that pick here, and there’s no guarantee Gold Coast actually have the list spots for another live pick either.
Perhaps most critically, we can speculate that the Suns may also have some understanding that their willingness to trade this year could influence the price they need to pay for propsects such as Zeke Uwland next year.
Richmond, incidentally, now hold nearly a third of the first 24 picks in this possible super draft, in what shapes to be a truly fascinating list rebuilding process over the next few seasons.
Verdict: Fair trade, albeit only technically due to the glut of late picks which only have true value to the Suns
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 PAV. Expressing 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.