HPN continues covering this AFL Trade Period with roundup posts or progressive updates through the day. Watch for updates on social media
Just the three trades were made on the first day of week two, ahead of the traditional flurry of activity towards Wednesday’s deadline.
Many mooted deals remain to be made – or will just fall over. It’s worth remembering that what is in the public domain is just a fraction of what is happening behind the scenes.
The supply and distribution of information isn’t equal or fair. Some clubs will leak info, others won’t. Some agents will be proactive about the future of their clients, others will be more circumspect.
There’s also a heavy dose of language that doesn’t matter to anyone ever. “Official trade requests”, “finding their head around”, “official offers’, “final offer” – these are all quasi-legal terms that mean less to the person breathlessly reporting them than to you (or any player or club).
Tylar Young heads to Perth
Tylar Young is a mature age defender, picked up at age 23, whose place in the rebuilding Tigers side seems to have been on the verge of being eclipsed. There’s few landing spots in the league softer for a KPD than Richmond, but West Coast may be one of them.
At 196cm he is a genuine big defender and split his time this year back from an ACL injury between the VFL and AFL levels.
Given his late start at AFL level there’s a thought that he could still be developing at 27. However in the Tigers list profile, he’s caught between the stalwarts Nick Vlaustin and Noah Balta and the promise and upside of up and coming youngsters like Josh Gibcus, Campbell Gray, and Luke Trainor. The Tigers can afford to be patient, try different mixes with their kids, and invest in long term defensive stocks.
As such, Young has taken the security of a 3-year Eagles contract instead, a club in a similar position to the Tigers but with much less in the way of key defensive position promise right now.
The trade is reasonably generous given Young’s age, injury-impacted seasons, and status as an unheralded mature age recruit. The Eagles will be pleased to get an instant contributor in as they look to start winning at least the occasional game of footy, but the Tigers would do better, on average, with their draft pick.
On a side note, we are starting to see a trend where this year’s draft picks are being undervalued compared with real players.
Verdict: Trade favours the Tigers.
Will Brodie is all but delisted
Former Sun Will Brodie had a pretty bright 2022 at Fremantle where he played in finals as an on-baller, but has barely been sighted since then.
Brodie has been made redundant at Freo by the emergence of more fancied midfield options in the likes of Andrew Brayshaw, Caleb Serong and Hayden Young plus various secondary options such as Jaeger O’Meara and Matthew Johnson. That’s before even mentioning the “Luke Jackson as onballer” scheme.
Questions over his defensive game and his versatility have seen Brodie left out of the side for almost three full seasons.
At Port Adelaide the fit also looks like pure depth, since the Power aren’t short of inside midfielders and they already struggle to fit their current group of ball-first prime movers into a single midfield setup. That said, Brodie may get an early look at a chance to impress with the suspension of Ollie Wines next year.
The obvious connection here is Josh Carr, with the new Power coach being in charge of the Dockers midfield in 2022. But don’t overlook the value of affordable, AFL-ish level midfield depth.
The trade here is a look at some of the shadow currencies in play at the fringes of player exchange. Will Brodie is contracted, and this year, the occupancy of a list spot by an unwanted player hurts Freo by reducing the draft picks they can take into the draft and use as points for matching some relatively mid-range NGA prospects. He can’t be delisted without a cap hit and payout.
So Fremantle needed to get Brodie off their books.
As funny as pick 103 is, Port have only pick 49 within the first four rounds after trades for Lukosius last year and Corey Durdin last week. So that means pick 103 was their third live selection and it’s the first likely useless one to them. It just happens to be a 6th rounder.
For what it’s worth, the pick definitely won’t be useful to Freo, even after it slides up to the end of the draft around the 60 mark. Picks past 54 aren’t worth any bid matching points now, and even if they were, Freo would still have several of their own “natural” selections in this same range.
The pick value on this trade here is the notional value of a list spot, the minimum value HPN assigns to any pick. In this instance that’s pretty much what Freo were seeking.
Verdict: unfair trade no matter how little Brodie projects as playing.
Western Sydney and Western Bulldogs make the season’s first pick swap
The year’s first pick swap came later than usual, as clubs work around a draft in which they don’t see much depth and increasingly adjust to a world with live pick trading after the player exchange deadline.
The swap is a pretty neat illustration of how at least one club sees the draft, with GWS paying over the odds for a two pick upgrade on their first pick.
The Dogs need pick 37, reportedly, for further trading and have acquired it for a fairly minimal drop in the first round.
As for the Giants, there are a few considerations. The pick swap is a losing value proposition for them, but there’s reasons to make such ostensibly “losing” trades. Most obviously, if they think the options at 12 are likely to be significantly friendlier than at 14, and have pinpointed a drop off in player quality beyond the first 12 or 13, this was the going rate for entering that group of selections and so they’ve pulled the trigger.
Second, the pick 37 traded here was their third pick (they hold 35 as well), so it’s a question if they even intend to take three live picks this year.
As it sits they have 36 players on their primary list including uncontracted but likely to remain players like Leek Aleer. If they manage to bring Clayton Oliver in they are at 37 players out of a maximum 38.
As a result there’s little to no chance that pick 37 was going to be used by the Giants. Some clubs may be sniffing around pick 35 now as well, or it may be bundled up for another shift up the order.
Don’t be surprised if the picks involved here get included in further moves as well.
Verdict: somewhat fair trade, likely fits GWS’ plans better than the value exchange suggests.