HPN continues covering this AFL Trade Period with roundup posts or progressive updates through the day. Watch for updates today on social media
Tuesday was another relatively quiet day with just two lower profile Gold Coast player trades and a minor pick swap. This isn’t unusual, and is often the calm before the storm.
The final day, starting at 2pm and rolling into a 7:30 deadline, is always the busiest period of the player movement period.
HPN will attempt to keep up with it on social media , then return with a more detailed roundup post after focusing on a summary of the period for the ABC.
Brayden Fiorini finds a home at “The Hangar”
With 123 games for the Suns over ten seasons it’s safe to say that Brayden Fiorini has fallen short of being an automatic pick for the Suns.
He’s played 71 senior games and 32 VFL games over the last 5 years, somehow never shaking off the sense of being on the fringe of selection, previously noted publicly as exploring trades to find more senior football in at least 2022 and 2024.
His 18 games this year is actually the best he’s managed since Covid but there was still likely a strong chance that the midfielder would find more pressure on his spot. The Suns have a strong core around the contest and over the last few years he has drifted from regular centre bounce attendances to a more peripheral position with the strength of Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson and the emergence of Alex Davies and Bailey Humphrey around the ball. The mooted arrival of Christian Petracca wouldn’t have helped with job security either.
For Fiorini at Essendon, the hope would be that he has an easier path to regular on-ball game-time, with the question being how effective he can be in a less star studded outfit. He also steps in as a veteran well-regarded for resilience and work ethic at a side that probably thinks it can use both qualities.
The trade rates Fiorini as a little higher than his projection, which perhaps isn’t surprising since Fiorini stands the chance of playing more senior footy than in recent years and potentially taking on a bigger role. Overall though, it’s a reasonable swap, the Suns gathering future pick value rather than current, perhaps now comfortable where they sit in anticipation of potential bids for the likes of Zeke Uwland and Dylan Patterson (plus another 2528461 kids later).
On that note – the Suns are down to just 29 listed players. Even if Petracca comes in, that leaves room for all five Academy kids to come in (if they have enough points to match them all).
Verdict: fair trade.
Connor Budarick finds a home at “The Kennel”
Connor Budarick spent most of his first few years at Gold Coast playing in defence, only managing a handful of games in some years in between two knee reconstructions. Across that time he was a conventional small defender, before shifting forward this year to play as a defensive small forward.
Both roles are generally thankless, and brutally under-recognised.
Budarick kicked aix goals this year, his first since a solitary major in his debut season. Scoring probably wasn’t really the point of his role up forward however.
He was there to apply pressure and enhance the structure of the Suns ground level forward mix, complementing more attacking smalls such as Ned Long and helping delay or deny easy transition by opposition backlines. The attributes he brought were enough to keep him in the team over the likes of Malcolm Rosas, but others such as Rogers and Lombard are coming for his job.
It’s a bit of a question what roles the Dogs will find for him. Their statements place him as a defender in their view, and that end of the ground is almost certainly the area more in flux for the Bulldogs, who paired an extremely productive offence with indifferent defence in 2025 and ultimately missed finals.
The question marks for Budarick are his size – which can leave him prone to being isolated – and his ability to spur counterattacks when he does get the ball. He’s not an aerial player or a distributor, ideally a team doesn’t want him directly impacting the ball too often.
Good coaches can work to minimise the downsides if the system is right, and there’s some hope that the Dogs system might work to incorporate him in such a way. If the measure for the Dogs is going to be simply reducing the influence of a particular small forward, maybe they will find something they like.
The trade, a swap from a mid range usable pick to one right at the tail end of the draft, roughly matches the projected output of Budarick.
However, it should be noted that even though HPN finds that such purely ground level defensive players tend to rate better on PAV than under many other valuation systems (due to the specific assignment of defensive values) Budarick is still someone whose doesn’t move the dial that much in PAV terms with his lack of tangible ball impact.
So the caveat here is that clubs may well value some of his intangible defensive attributes higher than shown here. Regardless, it’s a decent swap.
Verdict: fair trade
Collingwood’s future third round pick finds a home at “The Gabba”
The second pick swap was a neat and very comprehensible swap job between the two most recent premiers. A pair of nearly equivalent picks were swapped by teams near each other on the ladder, with the Lions trading into next year’s draft and the Pies into this one.
Collingwood have mooted trade deals to pursue as they seek Jack Buller from Sydney and and the extra pick opens that up for them, while Brisbane already have a heap of draft picks to pay for Daniel Annable and have little need of these late picks specifically.
Verdict: extremely fair trade