Mirkov Gets Another Crack – And Not With Us

So young Alex Mirkov’s got himself another crack at the big time, landing on the Giants’ list after we at Carlton decided a few years back he wasn’t quite our cup of tea. Good luck to the kid, genuinely, but forgive an old bloke for raising an eyebrow at how these things go round in circles these days.

Back in my day – and yes I know, here we go again – you got delisted from a VFL club and that was pretty much your lot. Maybe you drifted back to the local comp, maybe you had one last crack at a country league flag, but the idea of bouncing straight back onto another list a couple of seasons later wasn’t really the done thing. Now it’s almost expected. Delisted free agency, rookie upgrades, mid-season drafts – head office has built so many trapdoors and side doors into the system that nobody ever really leaves anymore, they just go round the back and knock again.

The VAFA Pedigree

Mirkov made his name through the VAFA, which for the uninitiated is about as honest a finishing school as you’ll find in Victorian footy – no frills, no cameras half the time, just blokes playing hard footy in front of a few hundred rugged-up parents and a dog on a lead. Clubs like that have been turning out AFL-ready talent for decades and not getting nearly enough credit for it. We saw enough in him to put him on our own list in the first place, which tells you the pathway system worked exactly as it’s meant to – find the talent, give it a chance, see what happens.

What happened, in our case, is it didn’t quite stick. These things occur. Not every kid who looks the goods in the twos translates straight into senior league footy, and not every delisting is some grand failure of judgement by the recruiting staff – sometimes it’s simply a numbers game, other times it’s a bloke not quite physically ready, and other times, frankly, it’s a bit of both. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know exactly why it didn’t work out at Ikon Park, because I don’t, and neither does anyone ringing the radio stations pretending they do.

Second Chances and Rule Tinkering

What I will say is the whole system around second chances has gotten so elaborate now that half the time you need a flow chart to understand how a kid who was delisted in October ends up on another club’s list by Christmas. Mid-season drafts, supplemental selection periods, category B rookies, international signings taking up list spots that used to go to Victorian country kids – it’s a different sport administratively to the one I grew up watching, even if the actual contest out there on a Saturday afternoon is still recognisably the same game at its heart.

I’m not against a bloke getting another opportunity, don’t get me wrong. If anything I think more clubs should be prepared to take a punt on delisted players who clearly still have the tools, rather than chasing the next shiny father-son prospect or academy kid with the ink barely dry on the contract. Mirkov getting picked up by the Giants is a decent news story for footy generally – it says the game still values blokes who keep working at their craft even after getting the knock-back once.

What It Says About Our List Management

But I’ll admit, as a Carlton man through and through, there’s always a little itch when you see a bloke we let go pop up somewhere else with a bit of fanfare. We’ve had our share of list management decisions over the years that looked sharp at the time and dopey five seasons later, and a few that looked dopey immediately and somehow turned out fine. That’s footy. You can’t bat a thousand on recruiting and delisting, not even the clubs with the biggest football departments and the flashiest data dashboards telling them who’s going to be a star.

The real test for Mirkov won’t be getting on the list – plenty of blokes manage that. It’ll be whether he can actually force his way into a seniors side that’s building something out west.

And that’s the bit nobody talks about enough. Landing on an AFL list for a second time is a nice achievement and I won’t take that away from him, but it’s hardly a guarantee of anything. The Giants have shown over the years they’re not afraid to give opportunity to blokes other clubs moved on from, which is to their credit, but opportunity and actual senior games are two very different things. Plenty of delisted-and-redrafted stories end with a handful of games and another delisting a couple of years down the track. A few end with a bloke becoming a genuine contributor and making his old club look a bit silly in hindsight. We’ll find out soon enough which category this one falls into.

The Bigger Picture on List Spots

What does grind my gears a touch, and I’ll say it even though I know the younger readers will roll their eyes, is how many pathways there are now compared to list spots actually available. Every club’s got its rookie list, its mature-age category, its next-gen academy arrangements, its category B internationals who might kick two goals in a trial game and never be seen again. Somewhere in amongst all that juggling, a genuinely promising local VAFA talent can get squeezed out entirely, through no fault of his own footy ability, simply because the numbers don’t add up that particular off-season.

I don’t begrudge GWS for taking the punt on Mirkov – if anything it’s the kind of move I’d like to see our own list managers be a bit bolder about, rather than always chasing the next first-round bolter. There’s real value in blokes who’ve had a taste of AFL footy already, know what the standard looks like, and come back hungrier for having missed out once. That’s not sentiment talking, that’s just common sense footy logic that’s been true since the game started, VFL days included.

Good Luck to Him, Genuinely

So here’s hoping Mirkov goes alright out there in orange. He did his time at our club, didn’t quite crack it, and now gets another shot with a side that clearly reckons there’s still something worth developing. If he ends up playing fifty senior games and becoming a handy complementary player for the Giants, good on him and good on them for seeing what we perhaps didn’t see all the way through. And if it doesn’t pan out, well, he’ll still have given it another genuine crack, which is more than plenty of blokes ever get the chance to say.

Either way, it’s another reminder that in this competetion these days nothing is ever quite as final as it used to seem back when I first started following the Blues – delisted doesn’t mean done, and every kid with a bit of talent seems to get at least one more look if he’s willing to keep chasing it. Whether that’s progress or just modern footy being a bit too soft to let anyone actually go, I’ll leave you to decide. I’ve got my own view, as you’d expect.