HPN will be covering this AFL Trade Period with roundup posts or progressive updates through the day. Watch for updates on social media.
Welcome to HPN’s coverage of the 2025 trade period. Unlike some recent years, there’s already been some action on the trade front. More on that soon.
HPN has also been quite busy so far. The 2025 version of the HPN Trade Calculator has been launched along with a refresher on how HPN values trades and FA moves (and how you should too).
If you’ve never read HPN’s work before, the lens applied to valuations is based on past performance and future projection.
HPN uses a player and draft picks specific projections to model future outputs, measured in a system called Player Approximate Value (PAV).
This is best thought of as a “mile up” view of the broad sweep of player movement and an attempt to quantify which trades are being made to win now, win later, or just to get rid of a player.
Of course, numbers aren’t the whole story, so HPN also uses these valuations as a launching pad to discuss the reasons, motivations and risks behind particular moves, where players might fit, why particular pick trades occur, and the like.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the trades made on Monday through to Wednesday of the trade period.
Carlton adds ruck depth in Liam Reidy
Carlton need tall depth.
With the free agency departure of Tom de Koning and the delisting of an untried young tall in Harry Lemmey, Carlton needed to bolster their ruck stocks.
Marc Pittonet is getting on in years and has played more than 15 senior games once in his career. That leaves only Hudson O’Keefe as a backup ruck before the club starts toying with options like Lewis Young, Harry McKay and, god forbid, Patrick Cripps.
Throw in the departure of Jack Silvagni and the wantaway status of Charlie Curnow and there’s a real deficit of talls in general looming at the Blues. Picking up a mature age cheap ruck from a club which is fully set on their best star options and various backups is a no-brainer for them.
For the Dockers, Reidy has played 3 senior games and simply will not play without injuries to at least one, and possibly both, of Sean Darcy and Luke Jackson. Those two are headliner players the Dockers have invested heavily in.
In a salary cap system, we can assume it would be very irresponsible for Fremantle to offer anyone else serious money as a depth ruck commensurate with what Reidy can earn plausibly pushing for senior selection elsewhere.
Reidy will at the baseline immediately compete with the younger O’Keefe for either second ruck duties or as the backup for games Pittonet misses.
There’s a chance that he also gets a shot as the primary ruck either now or in the short term future.
The trade of roughly equivalent picks explicitly values Reidy at almost nothing in the moving from a club that can’t play him to a club that might.
HPN’s projections concur, based on his 3 games of exposed form as a 24 year old, a position from which most players do not have fruitful careers. The picks on both sides also stand a good chance of being gobbled up by tied player bid matching.
Verdict: fair trade, though any upside scenario where Reidy plays regular senior footy means Carlton do well.
Malcolm Rosas heads harbourside
The Gold Coast Suns look set to lose a few players this season as they retool and consolidate after their first finals series. Among the players leaving is Malcolm Rosas, a forward who has shown some flashes of his prowess at AFL-level.
Rosas is the grandson of Bill Dempsey, an inaugural NT Hall of Fame legend, WAFL 341 game hall of famer, Indigenous Team of the Century member and one of the NT’s non-AFL/VFL entrants into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Rosas was drafted to the Suns under academy concessions in the Darwin area.
Since the Hardwick era, Rosas has generally found himself behind the likes of Ben Long, Bailey Humphrey. Jy Farrar and Ben Ainsworth in Gold Coast’s non-key forward mix, though he did kick 1.7 goals a game in 7 appearances last season. He’s generally got a good sense for finding the ball and the goals, but off-ball work has raised a couple of questions.
At age 24 and with five years in the system, he should show pretty quickly at a new club whether he has the ability to lock down a regular senior spot. He moves to Sydney where he shapes as an intriguing piece of an evolving forward puzzle.
For most of their recent era, the Swans have generally been fronted by an inexperienced trio of key forwards and the two veterans Tom Papley and Will Hayward, and relied on great ball movement to unlock paths to goals for them. They’ve also several rotating mid-forward hybrid kick a large share of their goals.
Last year, the big 3 of Heeney, Warner and Gulden combined for 84 goals in their run to the grand final, 23% of their total haul as a club.
Sydney have also, alongside these elements, tried a rotating cast of makeshift forward options to round out the offensive lineup. This has included Sam Wicks, Braeden Campbell, Caiden Cleary, Angus Sheldrick, Jake Lloyd, Tom Hanily and Jesse Dattoli. Of these, only Hanily and Datolli are anything other than defensive forward options or developing midfield prospects.
Rosas is likely to enter the club seeking to shape the forward mix into something he can fit into. He will compete with this varied crew for gametime, and also competes with the temptation to rely on mid/forward options.
The point of difference he is likely to offer is greater scoring craft and the ability to generate his own shots. While he likely isn’t expected to be a pressure applying monster, questions centre on his ability to hold to enough defensive positioning to avoid being an active liability.
The trade treats Rosas as valued as a late pick, unsurprisingly given he was told to explore his options and the Suns have shown that they prefer different players.
His path to gametime for the Swans and outperforming a relatively lowly projection is there, but he’s going to form part of a forward group that remains in flux and could take a number of different directions in future seasons. Rosas’ best so far has been very good, so this could end up looking quite good for the Swans long term for a very small outlay.
Verdict: fair trade.
Brandon Starcevich heads west in half a trade
The not-so-secret element of Brandon Starcevich’s move to West Coast is the need for the two clubs to manage their way around West Coast’s extremely outsized free agency compensation for Oscar Allen’s move to Brisbane. Absent that move, Starcevich is a free agent who would’ve jut gone directly there.
Starcevich is a dual premiership defender with likely half a decade of good footy ahead of him. His general defensive nous, handy kicking and experience will all be a boon to West Coast where he should immediately step into a de facto leadership role.
Starcevich can pinch hit in smaller and taller roles from an accountability POV, and can fly as the spare/third man in marking contests. The slight question is how much counterattack he generates on his own, but West Coast desperately need players who knows how to stop cricket scores being tallied by opposition sides.
There are, unfortunately, serious question marks over his future after a run of very concerning brain injuries. It’s hard to say how much the risk of medical retirement has played into his contract offer or his valuation as a trade prospect, but the worry is there.
The trade seems to favour Brisbane most strongly, with Starcevich’s projection downgraded by his missed game time. If he stays fit long term West Coast will likely end up winners – but there’s a fair bit of uncertainty there.
Both Perth clubs sending the Lions ample pick value, though it should be noted that West Coast also get pick 2 out of this deal by preserving gree agency compensation, making this a massive win for them in the true accounting of things.
Brisbane, similarly, get Oscar Allen for free on top of this trade. Like most free agency compensation, the exchange is a large win-win at the expense of the rest of the league.
Fremantle’s movements are interesting here. The raw pick value is a downgrade, mostly because they shed two later picks for one. In a shallower draft, the Dockers may be unlikly to take four picks, meaning their fourth selection is not very useful to them anyway.
Understood solely as pick 13 and 34 for pick 20 and 24, the trade looks much more balanced, and something clubs might do in isolation to get two looks at the top 30. In this case, however, Freo’s concerns are not overpaying for Judd McVee and having enough bid matching value for any NGA bid matches, which are likely to come well after their new first pick.
Verdict: fair trade with an extremely large asterisk about the shadow value of free agency compensation.
Judd McVee exchanges one ‘V’ guernsey for another
Judd McVee has drifted between different defensive roles in the Melbourne setup, sometimes tried as a straight defensive option, sometimes tasked more with rebound and ball movement, and sometimes pushed up the ground into more of a defensive midfield role.
For Fremantle, he shapes as a part of the defensive puzzle, with the Dockers talking up his run and carry and speed in an up the ground role. He should slot into the team alongside the likes of Jordan Clark, and provide whatever mix of attributes the Dockers need of him.
The trade is a simple one for one swap, and Fremantle specifically traded down to this pick in order to hand it to Melbourne, and also didn’t trade pick 20 which they also hold. This suggests both sides had a fairly specific valuation of the young defender in mind. It’s also worth noting this pick is the first selection on night 2 of the draft, something clubs often seek to use for additional live trade leverage.
Verdict: very fair trade with the pick closely reflecting McVee’s projection.
Flanders becomes a Saint
Sam Flanders is a well established 24 year old coming into the prime years of his career with nearly 100 games under his belt. He played primarily as a midfielder prior to 2025, racking up disposals and about a 1-in-3 centre bounce attendance rate across 2023 and 2024, but has been shifted more to the outside and forward in 2025.
That move probably hasn’t resulted in instant success, with no apparent increase in output in terms of scoring, assists or inside 50s, but there’s some signs that a more balanced mid and forward role might suit him well – with a lower centre bounce attendance rate in 2025, he strongly increased his clearance rate at those contests to winning almost 1 in 4 clearances at centre bounces. That’s a suggestion that he has potential as an impact rotation through the middle, rather than a full time workhorse.
Rergardless, this is something for the Saints to balance out as they overhaul their own midfield mix by bringing Flanders in as one of several trade moves this off-season. On the face of it, the discussions around the role of Jack Steele point to the the obvious gap being left here.
The Saints were often slow or one paced through the middle, with their focus on drafting fleet of foot players not carrying to how they actually set up. It provided them defensive protection at the expense of territory and first use scoring pressure.
The question that arises is that are they moving too much the other way.
For the Suns, moving Flanders meets a couple of objectives with their trades this year. Firstly, Zeke Uwland shapes as a top draft selection and Dylan Patterson around the top ten, so the Suns need draft picks to match bids for them.
Second, while the Suns expressed a desire to retain the contracted Flanders, they appear to be continuing to reshape their list after two full seasons with Damien Hardwick at the helm and a first finals series under their belt.
The mooted interest in some other big names comes at a cost, which includes role dislocation for other players and the need to fit cap space. These two factors mean the Suns ended up being pretty pragmatic about the trade request here.
The Suns have a plethora of talented young players struggling to break in already. The squeeze for spots in the mid/forward rotation will only get worse if Trac heads north.
Verdict: Fair trade. The top ten pick pretty closely reflects Flanders’ projected value.