With the last six trades of a slightly quieter trade period all dropping well into the evening, HPN focused on getting our summary done for the ABC, and now we return to wrap up the final trades in detail and add a bit more about the overall shape of the period.
If you want to read the high level take, please click on that link above.
As discussed throughout, and in the ABC article, this was a trade period shaped by the depth and quality of the first round (and then some) of this apparent Super Draft. Several clubs traded away first round picks, as late as 20, at a steep profit, in order to prepare for tied player bids or achieve player recruitment goals.
Clubs who looked to trade into the top 20 mostly did so at an unusually high cost, though a couple of swaps going up and down within the superdraft zone didn’t involve the same premium. It was getting into the mix to begin with which cost teams.
Overall, when we look at “winners” there’s four standouts who gained future value overall.
West Coast secured a stack of future pick value for Tom Barrass (see below) and tabbed a free agent for nothing in Jack Graham, breaking even elsewhere. The Eagles have two tied talents next year, so that accumulation wasn’t just for nothing.
Essendon extracted a spicy Melbourne future first and a stack of points value for their pick 9. That Demons 2025 first rounder could be anything – and represents a bet either way on their prospects for next year.
Port Adelaide traded Dan Houston and their future first to get back into this draft and nab Jack Lukosius (plus a couple of others). As much Houston is the headline of that trade it’s likely the future of Lukosius that will shape what we think about it in the fullness of time.
Finally. Brisbane just turned pick 20 into nearly twice as much pick value to ensure that Ashcroft and Marshall would join the Lions next year.
That Lions’ trade behaviour was notable for how well they profited from the points splitting. The trades were profitable in PAV terms but also in bidding currency terms. Below is a visualisation, cut for technical reasons from the ABC article, of the starting and final hands of the three clubs most visibly trading for points. It shows just how much profit Brisbane made here with just pick 20:
On the flip side, Melbourne are the side whose trades deviate most from what HPN’s projections call good value. They swapped later picks at a steep loss to get pick 9 and sent away a future first valued at pick 5. Melbourne’s trade calculations are based on their assessment of the strength of the talent available at 5 and 9, and on expecting to finish a lot higher on the ladder than 14th next year. They also traded picks that they were unlikely to use this year – something that’s hard for the formula to judge from the outside.
Carlton, too, sent away a lot of pick value to move up the draft order, and will be making the same calculation as Melbourne about draft strength and 2025 performance to bridge the risk gap. Carlton, however, currently has four list spots to fill and only two useful-ish picks. They might have to upgrade some rookies, pounce on some DFAs or look at splitting their pick 3 to fill out their final spots.
The Tigers also rated as a “loser” basically because of the sheer quantity of player value they sent out, and the notional value of the picks they shed to get pick 20 off Brisbane. The gap between their long term gains and losses is equal to roughly their on-field quality dip for next year specifically, neatly illustrating how they’ve traded. In practice, they turned their players and starting draft hand into a stack of high picks. They will live and die on the outcome of this draft and their ability to retain what HPN hopes to be the first to call the “Super Eight”.
Common to all these three teams is the price paid for higher draft picks being especially high this year. They’re valued by HPN based on the average historical performance levels of those picks. Being assessed as “losing value” here can often simply reflect the higher value of the draft picks this year specifically, based on the players available, and therefore the greater appetite for draft risks.
James Peatling to Adelaide
James Peatling’s pathways to the AFL took a little more time than most. Despite playing junior rep footy for the Allies, Peatling was overlooked in his first few draft eligible seasons. The former Giant found his feet through the AFL Sydney and the Giants reserve side before getting tabbed in the 2021 midseason draft. It took some time, but eventually Peatling found his feet at AFL level – enough so that the Crows jumped on him.
Peatling played most of his early football on the outside – on the wing or pushing as a high half forward. Hitting the inside wasn’t really his speciality before Adam Kingsley decided to use him to inject some pace in his midfield group (alongside Toby Bedford). That GWS group is deep however, and Peatling wasn’t always an automatic selection for the Giants. He was listed as a flat omission multiple times in 2024 as the Giants tried to find the combinations that took them deep in the finals.
It’s worth noting that, due to Adelaide’s allegedly large contract offer and low finishing position last year, the Giants had little leverage here. The Crows threatened to walk him through the Preseason Draft – something they also did to ex-Giant Jackson Hately years earlier.
This threat may have changed the calculus of this trade. It does look a little weighted to Adelaide, with Peatling probably worth more than the downgrade between the exchanged picks. A Crows rise up the ladder or a GWS slide would further the gap. Peatling’s valuation is relatively modest for a prime age player in demand, given he only played 29 of a possible 50 games over the last two years. He will outperform his valuation by playing average quality regular senior footy for a few years.
There’s some question about his fit at the Crows and whether he is ready for a bigger role in their midfield given his relative lack of exposure in that type of role. Peatling’s role was to structurally support prime movers such as Green, Coniglio and Kelly. At Adelaide the assignment may be a little different.
The question is whether he will be able to hold his spot as Adelaide’s younger players develop, but he will have the chance to assert himself and secure a permanent role.
Verdict: Trade favours Adelaide.
Caleb Daniel joins the Kangaroos
Together with Jack Darling and Luke Parker, North Melbourne have successfully followed through on aspiring list manager Alastair Clarkson’s public declaration that he would like to secure some older players to guide and set standards around an extremely young group with nearly nobody over the age of 25.
Daniel has been a stalwart ball using defender for the Dogs over the years. He’d started to fall out of favour, with his defensive deficiencies starting to lose their fit with the Dogs’ gameplan.
Daniel’s quick-thinking and acting playing style tends to dictate a certain type of defensive structure. While his positioning is usually solid, his size has always remained a question for teams trying to create mismatches. It may require a team to play plus-ones in defence or else have helping players ready to roll back to cover these potential mismatches. For most of his career his ability to do damage offensively covered this tradeoff.
Assuming North Melbourne can do this, Daniel should plug in fairly comfortably as a level head and free up some other players to be redeployed. At the age of 29, he could be a steady hand for several years if North’s list situation demands it.
Pick 25 looks an overvaluation based on Daniel’s recent lack of senior games, and helps leave North with just the one useful selection in pick 6. However, it’s pretty clear that the Roos will give him opportunities from day 1. Weirdly for a team with modest 2025 aspirations, it’s something of an “all-in” move – call it all-in for lifting the immediate floor rather than all in for a flag.
For the Dogs, pick 25 straight up is a great get, and with other moves, sits as their second live pick at the fringe of the highly sought after range for this draft
Verdict: Trade favours the Dogs.
Luke Parker brings sidekick Jacob Konstanty to North
The third North veteran, a midfielder to complement Darling forward and Daniel back, comes to North with a surprise bonus in Jacob Konstanty, the former pick 20 for the Swans who looked fairly likely to be delisted otherwise.
Konstanty is a small forward from Gippsland, and played some VFL football in between injury issues, but never really seemed to show much at that level, in particular perhaps lacking the positional flexibility Sydney expects in its mix of small forwards and hybrid mid/forwards. Trading for an impending delisting can often be a move by the new club to prevent that player playing the open free agency market, but in some cases this element of the swap being bundled in can also be a favour to a player or agent.
North desperately needs AFL level players as well – especially small forwards. He should get at least an early look at AFL footy in 2025.
But this deal really wasn’t about Konstanty.
Luke Parker also found himself on the fringes of the Swans this year after being one of the most notable Swans in recent years. He was selected right on the edges of the grand final 22, partly due to injury and suspension keeping him from making his case for selection through the year. While he played solid football at times this year it was also somewhat clear that his form in 2024 was a few steps down on that of five years ago.
Age is a fickle beast.
Parker will turn 33 next year but North are getting him in for a reason. North had one of the worst defensive midfields last year and desperately need players to set standards and structure at the contest. It may limit the opportunities for their 34164172 young attacking mids but there has to be a trade-off sooner or later.
There seems little doubt that at North Melbourne Parker is being brought in to play in the AFL side in at least 2025. North will be likely hoping that in the next 12-24 months that rising internal competition makes his selection tough.
The trade is a fair valuation, noting that Konstanty’s value here is still tied to a fairly recent draft selection
Verdict: Fair trade
Hawthorn secure Tom Barrass at a steep price
Most draft and trade strategies seemed to make sense from the outside. Then you have Hawthorn, maybe the hardest club to read this year.
Hawthorn was almost the only club to voluntarily vacate the first round of this year’s draft without tied players to bid on this year or next. Their goal didn’t seem to be more picks, but instead players.
After the free agency hit of Josh Battle, Hawthorn have gotten their main target in Tom Barrass, a veteran key defender who they hope will shore up their sometimes rickety defence for a number of years to come. Barrass is a stellar organizer down back, and is one of the more underrated players in the league. If he can tap into his best form for Hawthorn, he should immediately have an impact.
The Hawks in 2024 mostly succeeded in defending upfield and denying transition, sitting near the top for least scores conceded overall with a low 1v1 loss rate, but only middling for scores conceded per inside 50 entry. Barrass is nearly the perfect piece to help fix that.
With a breakout year comes greater opposition focus and a tougher draw, and next year they’ll need to evolve to repeat the same results.
That was a clear area for Sam Mitchell and his recruiting staff to focus on this offseason. Getting Josh Battle in provides one part of that boost, and Barrass likely the other.
There are real question marks on the future for Barrass however. Not least of which is his interview earlier in the year with Channel 7 where he discussed the permanence of his back injury, the measures needed to keep the pain level stable, and how he feels obligated to play until it’s unbearable.
This should be language to put clubs off a long-term contract or a big ticket trade, but Hawthorn have backed him in mightily here. He’s already contracted for three more seasons until the end of 2027, and reports are the Hawks have extended this. You’d trust that the Hawks medical staff have done a lot of work to ensure that Barrass will be able to be fit through the rest of his contract.
The trade rates Barrass very highly given his injury issues, essentially rating him to play until his mid-30s. However, a lot of the value hit is actually taken by Carlton, who earlier traded Hawthorn their own future picks for pick 14, a conversion loss in line with other movements into the first round this year.
Since Hawthorn have Carlton’s future picks instead of their own now, the Hawks have basically acquired Barrass at the cost of pick 14 and the difference between where Hawthorn and Carlton finish next year. The worst case scenario is Hawthorn have a sophomore slump, Carlton hit top 4 or beyond, and the loss ends up more significant than suggested here.
Verdict: Strongly West Coast weighted trade. More balanced for Hawthorn when considering the linked pick trade to Carlton.
The Bailey Smith, Matt Kennedy and Jack Macrae moderately Super Trade
Featuring a discussion on the valuation of long term injured players
Occasionally over the last decade, HPN has run into the issue of projecting value for a player who missed an entire season or more due to injury, but is still young enough and was previously good enough to command a high trade price. The task is balancing the understanding that a 0-output season is unlikely to repeat every year with the reality that a lot of severely injured players never come back fully and some don’t come back at all.
If a player has an injury interrupted year, they still play some footy and their value is self-discounting, but when it’s a broken leg or ACL, that often doesn’t happen. These zero-year trade situations are rare enough that HPN hasn’t fully systematised a method. Instead HPN has a general approach to test on these cases.
Whether it was Jaegar O’Meara, Tom Mitchell or Joe Daniher, the idea has been to decide on a projection that bridges the gap between over-emphasising the injury-cancelled season and pretending the player will just continue as previously. In some cases this fully replaced the alternative value, in others, it was just noted as an alternative look.
Based on academic research about the return rate of ACLs, firstly to playing football and secondly to playing at the same vs a lower level, a fair approach seems to be assigning about 70% of pre-injury performance as a replacement for the zero year. That is to say, accounting for the average odds of the player coming back and their likely performance level afterwards.
All this is a way to say that Bailey Smith’s projection, applying this value adjustment, is higher than in the HPN Trade Calculator, where we hadn’t applied it. In future years HPN hopes to systematically apply an adjustment for players meeting age and quality thresholds who miss nearly entire seasons, by interpolating a reduced fraction of their previous output as a seed.
The trade
Bailey Smith himself had a very good 2022 and is known especially as a hard running midfielder. Role changes and form issues hurt his 2023, before tearing his ACL in December. That forced Smith to miss the entire 2024 season (and working towards getting himself down the road to Geelong).
Smith is a particularly hard player to value given how his profile greatly outshines his proven output to date. To the outside his profile befits one of the best players in the game. In reality, the picture is one more of potential. There are probably two swing skills for Smith moving forward. One is his ability to win the ball closer to the inside and effectively transition it to the outside – the linebreaking mid which all sides desire. The other is the ability to effectively deliver the ball up forward using his speed from more outside positions.
He’s flashed both of these in the past, but Geelong’s lack of midfield depth presents him the real opportunity to demonstrate it in a finals team.
There are also some questions about the chances of Smith hitting his previous heights given that ACL injury. Smith his some of the recurrence risk factors in injuring his dominant leg, but he’s still under 25 years old. The bigger issue may be whether his running game fully returns – the majority of ACL returnees lose a little bit of their output going forward, and Smith is someone whose game heavily relies on peak physical attributes.
A comparison player may be someone like Tom Scully, who was also known primarily for his running power, and who despite his skills was only able to hit his peak with a sustained block of training and fitness that let him outrun any opponents.
Also leaving the Dogs is Jack Macrae – heading out on the other side of the bay to the Saints. The veteran midfielder was largely pushed out of direct midfield play for the Dogs and may be hoping to return to his preferred role at St Kilda. The Saints were crying out for effective midfielders by the end of last season, and it could prove to be a solid fit – if not a long term one. Again, it might not be the Macrae of years’ past that the Saints are getting but that might not matter – close enough may be good enough.
The final player involved in the trade is another relatively underrated and undervalued player in Matt Kennedy. Kennedy heads to the Dogs and looks like a potentially good fit for the Dogs midfield. Kennedy does a lot of the “hidden” things around contests. He brings structure and selflessness and the ability to work to support higher profile teammates. He’s unafraid to sacrifice his own game to push others forward – such as setting blocks or sitting back at contests to contain. He’s also handy as a forward half option, with a bit of defensive focus to boot.
After a finals series where we saw multiple credentialed but attack-oriented midfields blown out of the water partly due to the inability to make opposition clearances dirtier and messier, Kennedy shapes as someone who can bring a bit more of this to the Dogs.
The balance here works out reasonably well all round, with Smith seemingly traded for something pretty close (but slightly more than) to the modified reduced projection HPN came up with. The Cats ended up valuing him as something like the superdraft pick 17.
Elsewhere, the Dogs nab a useful piece in Kennedy, Carlton get a draft pick commensurate with the value of the remainder of Kennedy’s career. The Saints get Macrae for a fair price. It’s tidy business all around.
Verdict: Fair trade, including the Kennedy and Macrae legs. Smith’s trajectory from here could take a wide variety of paths.
Jake Stringer becomes a Giant
GWS already have a large set of tall forwards in Jesse Hogan, Aaron Cadman, Callum Brown, Jake Riccardi, Lachie Keeffe and Max Gruzewski and have been able to just about make that work due to the agility of players like Cadman and Brown. Throw in the ability of Toby Greene to provide a pseudo-tall forward mismatch in marking contests and it’s a super hard forward line to contain. Already known to play four tall forwards, they now look set to double down by bringing another mobile tall(ish) in Jake Stringer into the mix.
While somewhat maligned by Essendon fans for not being great as a number one target, Stringer moves around the ground sufficiently well to push up into stoppages and can make for a tricky mismatch with the right forward pairings. That’s something the Giants will likely be able to provide. Stringer should help the Giants lean more into their flexibility and mismatch focused forward line.
However, there is a real numbers game emerging up forward for the Giants. Not all of those above have the highest profiles or are the greatest players, but there’s a (theoretical) limit to the number of tall forwards you can play. Maybe it’s an indication that we might see more “Stoppage Stringer”, where his efficiency numbers have been stellar at times over the years.
For Essendon, Stringer isn’t quite surplus to needs but his move perhaps simplifies the puzzle solving aspect of Essendon’s gameplan and player fit. Their remaining tall targets now being Kyle Langford, the emerging Nate Caddy, Peter Wright and Harry Jones. Those are useful pieces but perhaps lack a clear identity. After seeing how they finished last year they still need to make them work in a sustainable manner.
The trade reflects Stringer’s age of 30 years old, which means even optimistically he won’t have many years left of value to the Giants. The Dons got some points matching value if Kako goes high in the draft order, and the pick may even be a sneaky late draft flier if the picks above it get consumed by that bid.
Verdict: Fair trade.