The Agents Already Winning The 2026 Draft Before A Ball’s Kicked
Every year around this time the draft nerds come out of hibernation, start talking about kids from Vic Metro and the Allies like they’ve watched them since Auskick, and somewhere in the background a much quieter game is being played. It’s the one about who actually manages these blokes — because by the time draft night rolls around, the agent on the phone has usually done more heavy lifting than half the recruiters in the room.
I say this as a Richmond supporter who has watched our list management over three decades swing between genius and absolute theatre, so I don’t say it lightly: the player manager business is where the real power sits. Clubs like to pretend it’s all spreadsheets and vertical leap testing, but the blokes holding the top-tier 2026 names on their books are shaping the market before a single first-round pick gets called.
The Big Two Stables Still Run The Show
Same as every year, two agencies keep popping up next to the best junior names going around — the sort of stables that already have a handful of top-ten picks from previous drafts on their books, plus a growing string of the current crop’s best midfielders and key forwards. You don’t need me to spell out which two, everyone in footy media circles already knows them by reputation, but the short version is this: if a kid is being talked about as a top-five selection in 2026, there’s a good chance he’s already signed with one of these two outfits, often before he’s even finished Year 12.
It’s not a coincidence. These agencies have runs on the board getting their clients contracts, soft landings at the right clubs, and — let’s be honest, this matters more than people admit — they know how to manage a family through a process that can be genuinely overwhelming for a seventeen-year-old and his parents. When you’re the agency that got the last three number-one picks sorted with minimal drama, word travels fast through the development squads and the Vic Metro and Vic Country programs.
Why This Actually Matters To Supporters
You might be thinking, who cares who the manager is, Kez, just tell me if the kid can play. Fair call. But here’s the thing — the manager absolutely influences where a kid ends up, what interstate move he’s willing to consider, and how the contract negotiations go once he’s actually drafted. A manager with existing relationships at certain clubs, or a stable full of clients already settled somewhere, can nudge a player’s thinking in ways that pure footy logic wouldn’t necessarily predict.
We’ve seen it before — a kid linked heavily to one state suddenly ends up walking in a different direction on draft night, and footy journos scratch their heads for about ten minutes before someone mentions, oh, his manager also looks after two blokes on that list. It’s not corruption, it’s not some grand conspiracy, it’s just business being done the way business gets done everywhere else. Doesn’t mean we have to love it, but pretending it doesn’t happen is a bit naive.
The Smaller Agencies Fighting For Scraps
Underneath the two heavyweight stables there’s a genuinely interesting scrap going on among the mid-tier player management firms, several of which have been quietly building relationships with regional academies and the AFL’s talent pathways for years now. Some of these outfits specialise in Indigenous pathways talent, others have built their whole model around the WA and SA state programs, picking up kids early and sticking with them through under-16s, under-18s, the lot.
It’s a bit like watching a mid-table club try to crack September — you respect the persistence even when the bigger operators keep hoovering up the headline talent. And every so often one of these smaller stables lands a genuine superstar and suddenly they’re the agency everyone’s whispering about for the next intake. Footy management is a results business just like coaching, and a kid going top-three off your books is the best advertising money can’t actually buy.
What This Means For The 2026 Crop Specifically
From what’s being said around the traps, this year’s top end is shaping as fairly concentrated talent-wise — a tight group of highly touted midfielders and a couple of key position prospects who everyone reckons could go in the first handful of picks. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of that group is already locked in with the usual suspects at the top of the management tree.
What I’d watch for as the year rolls on isn’t so much who manages who right now — that’s largely set in stone already — but how those relationships play out once the actual interviews and medical assessments and all the draft combine carry-on gets underway. A good manager earns their money in those final months, managing expectations, fielding calls from recruiters, occasionally talking a nervous kid off the ledge when a club suddenly goes cold on him for reasons nobody quite explains.
- Expect at least two or three of the projected top-ten picks to share the same manager.
- Watch the mid-tier agencies for a surprise riser out of a state league or school competition — it happens most years.
- Don’t be shocked if a
