The Mid-Season Draft Is Broken — Time To Fix It

The AFL mid-season draft was supposed to be a lifeline — a second chance for overlooked talent and injury-ravaged lists. What nobody warned us about was teh collateral damage it was doing to the competition sitting one rung below.

Because here’s the thing: you can’t keep raiding the VFL, the SANFL and the WAFL without consequences. And now, after years of quiet frustration, the people running those competitions have finally had enough.

What the State Leagues Are Actually Saying

Figureheads from all three major state competitions have spoken up, and their message is pretty consistent: the mid-season intake, as it currently operates, is making it harder to run a functional, competitive state-level competition.

Think about it from their perspective. A club in the SANFL builds a player up over eighteen months. They invest in him — coaching, conditioning, game time. Then, right in the guts of their season, an AFL club plucks him out. The state club loses a key contributor, their season is potentially torpedoed, and they get — what exactly? A pat on the back?

That’s not a partnership. That’s a one-way street.

The VFL in particular has grown into a genuinely competitive and well-attended competition. People go to those games. People care. Disrupting the rosters of VFL clubs mid-season doesn’t just hurt the clubs — it hurts the fans, the revenue, and the long-term health of the pathway.

The Timing Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here’s my main gripe. The mid-season draft sits smack in the middle of the state league seasons. You couldn’t design a more disruptive window if you tried.

AFL clubs spend the first six to eight rounds figuring out their injury situation, their positional needs, their list gaps. Fair enough. But then they go shopping — and they’re shopping in a store that’s trying to run its own business at the same time.

The state leagues aren’t a warehouse. They’re competitions with their own integrity to protect. And right now, the AFL scheduling treats them like a spare-parts bin.

Moving the draft window — either earlier in the piece, before state seasons really get rolling, or establishing a proper compensation mechanism — would go a long way. It sounds simple. It probably isn’t. But something has to give.

The Gaming of the System

Here’s where it gets a bit murky. There are whispers — and I reckon they’re more than whispers — that some AFL clubs are essentially parking players in state league affiliates with an eye on the mid-season window rather than genuine development. A player who might’ve been retained on a rookie or rookie-equivalent deal gets delisted, nudged toward an affiliate, and then picked back up when the club decides they need him.

Is that strictly against the rules? Depends who you ask. Does it smell funny? Definately.

It’s the sort of thing that erodes trust between the AFL and its state partners. The state leagues are supposed to be genuine developmental pathways, not holding bays for AFL clubs playing long games with their lists. If the mid-season draft is being gamed in this way, it needs tighter oversight — full stop.

What Genuine Reform Looks Like

Alright, enough problem-identifying. Let’s talk solutions, because that’s what actually matters.

• Compensation for state clubs. If an AFL side takes a player mid-season, the relevant state club should receive something tangible — draft points, a financial payment, something that acknowledges the loss. This is non-negotiable in my view.
• A clearer draft window. Set a firm date — early enough that state league rosters aren’t blown apart mid-competition. Lock it in, communicate it, and stick to it.
• Hard eligibility rules. Players who have been with a state club for less than a defined period should be ineligible for mid-season selection. Stop the parking-lot behaviour before it becomes entrenched.
• Player welfare protections. A player suddenly uprooted mid-season, moved interstate possibly, asked to perform at AFL level immediately — that’s a massive ask. Better support structures should should be a condition of any mid-season pick.

None of this is radical. It’s just fair.

The Collingwood Lens (You Knew It Was Coming)

Look, I’ll be upfront. I see this through black and white glasses, same as always. Carn the Pies.

But Collingwood has had genuine interest in the mid-season draft in recent years. We’ve also had players come through the VFL affiliate pathway who are absolutely central to what Craig McRae is building. The system, when it works, genuinely helps clubs like ours navigate the brutal reality of a 22-man list and an injury toll that’d make a hospital administrator wince.

That’s why I actually want it fixed rather than scrapped. A well-run mid-season draft is good for the competition. An exploitative, poorly-timed, state-league-damaging version of it? That’s bad for everyone — including clubs like Collingwood who depend on those development pathways producing quality players in the first place.

You can’t burn down the farm and then complain there’s no food.

The AFL Needs to Actually Listen This Time

The AFL is good at announcing reviews. Less good at acting on the feedback that comes out of them. The state league figures who’ve spoken up here aren’t rabble-rousers — they’re experienced administrators who understand player development better than most people in the game.

When the VFL, SANFL and WAFL are all singing from the same songbook, that’s not a coincidence. That’s a signal. And the AFL front office should be treating it as one.

The mid-season draft, in principle, is a good idea. A genuine second-chance mechanism that gives clubs a tool to address list emergencies and gives overlooked players a pathway back into the elite game? Sign me up. But good ideas poorly executed become bad policies. And right now, this one has the fingerprints of poor execution all over it.

So What Happens Next?

Honestly? Probably not much in the short term. The AFL moves at its own pace, and mid-season draft reform is hardly a headline-grabbing priority when there are finals positions to be decided and finals tickets to be sold.

But the groundswell is building. State league administrators are talking publicly. Players and coaches at that level are feeling the disruption. And eventually — maybe after one season too many where a state league club’s premiership hopes get kneecapped by an AFL talent grab — the pressure will reach a tipping point.

The question is whether the AFL gets ahead of it or waits until it’s a crisis.

Given recent form on proactive policy-making, I wouldn’t hold your breath. But I’ll keep banging this drum, because it matters — for the health of the whole competition, from grassroots to the MCG on Grand Final day.

Fix the mid-season draft. The state leagues deserve better. The players deserve better. The fans deserve better.

And if the AFL happens to tweak it in a way that gives Collingwood a slight recruiting edge in the process — well, I certainly won’t be complaining. Carn the Pies.