WHO is more important next to the coach at every AFL club? The fitness coach or the list manager (and by extension his recruiting team)?
Some might say the fitness coach and list manager have come to supersede even the coach's place in a professional AFL football program.
The fitness coach now has command of the training program, as highlighted whenever a coach is asked why his forwards are not having more goalkicking practice. It is all about the "training loads".
The list manager - and his team - has the greatest say on the players a senior coach will mentor (as well noted recently by Geelong premiership coach Chris Scott with his quote, "I am just one vote in four at list-management meetings.")
List management returned to the forefront of AFL debate last week with the third edition of the new mid-season draft. The question of the moment: Should there even be a mid-season draft?
Supplementary question is: Should there be a mid-season trade period?
Or a loan system?
The key question might be: Should list managers get any chance during the season to correct the mistakes exposed by poor decisions during the October trade period, the November draft sessions and the February supplementary draft?
It is the equivalent of considering: Should a coach be allowed to change his line-up - calling up any of the emergencies - at half-time of an AFL match, as now allowed in super short-form cricket?
Mid-season draft, mid-season trade and mid-season loaning of players - each model designed to refloat, rebalance or recalibrate a list that has been exposed to weak points by injury or poor form has its merit and points of concern.
MID-SEASON DRAFT: Superb for the individual - such as Port Adelaide's latest recruit, East Fremantle ruckman-forward Brynn Teakle. The joy of "living the dream" to be an AFL player is always to be appreciated.
And there are some players who do look better six months after being overlooked at an AFL national draft. Never has this been more relevant than in the COVID era when a fair group of teenagers from the 2019-2021 draft pool was denied the chance to impress AFL recruiters because there was a lockdown of their football competitions.
Now aged 20-22, they are getting the "catch-up" moment by supplementary drafts such as the mid-season version.
AFL clubs will say getting these late-blooming players into their system in June rather than December is beneficial - for the draftee and the club.
But as Sir Isaac Newton's third law of motion declares, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction".
State league clubs are the major losers from the AFL mid-season draft. There is the argument no SANFL-WAFL-VFL premiership campaign should rest on the shoulders of one or two players. And all State league clubs should - as is clearly the case at Woodville-West Torrens in the SANFL - take delight in being seen as a "football factory" developing high-quality prospects for the national game.
There also is the question on the necessity of a mid-season draft when not every mid-season draftee plays in his draft year ... and not every mid-season draft pick is called.
MID-SEASON TRADE: Now this would test the AFL club list managers.
In essence, it is a return to Australian football as we knew it when there was a June 30 clearance deadline. Players changed clubs - and States - for greater opportunity. Clubs fished the network to solve a problem created by injury or a bad start to a season - as well remembered at Alberton in 1978 when the need for a ruckman brought Murrie Batt from VFL club Collingwood (where he played two VFL games in 1978 before his 13 SANFL games in another black-and-white jumper that season).
Long-serving Richmond coach Damien Hardwick started the entire mid-season recruiting debate in 2012 when he said: "For the AFL to move forward I think we need something, whether it's a trade period where, for example, your list isn't fixed until mid-May - I think is a good option for us.
"There is a lot of tangibles to go through with regards to salary cap, how many players on and off lists - how it would work?
"But I think, from where the game has come from, most clubs have list managers now and they need to be employed to do this role. We are certainly looking at players all the time, and if you can get them to your club sooner rather than later, there's certainly a need for it.
"Something should definitely be looked at."
A decade later, the AFL has not budged other than to re-instate the mid-season draft to replace players lost to long-term injury (as Port Adelaide has with young defender Jake Pasini with a year-ending knee injury).
State league clubs would delight in the mid-season trade replacing the mid-season draft.
Players falling out of favour at one AFL club could recharge their careers at another.
List managers get another trigger for balancing or correcting their squads.
The challenge for the AFL is to sort through the issues of the maintaining the integrity of the salary cap; and deciding if the trade can involve picks from the AFL national draft (in case the potential trade is derailed by the "buying" club not having a player wanting to be part of a swap).
The sting is in making a trade that bites later in the season should injuries or poor form change the dynamics of an AFL team. But then that could be said of any trade made in October too.
MID-SEASON LOAN: Glenelg SANFL coach Brett Hand put this on the table again this week as he dealt with the consequences of losing two players - Brett Turner and Sam Durdin - in the mid-season draft to Adelaide and Carlton respectively.
This follows Richmond premiership coach Damien Hardwick re-heating this concept in March while watching West Coast struggle to assemble a competitive team while losing established players to COVID protocols.
"There’s some incredibly talented players around there that are craving for an opportunity, so I think it’s a great concept," Hardwick said. "I love the fact that we’re talking about bringing new players into an AFL environment ... it’s really exciting."
And then came the catch ... does Richmond really want to help an AFL rival become a more-competitive rival in the wild scrap for a place in September's top-eight AFL finals?
“We had a discussion among our coaches because it would be great to see young players get experience at the top level if they are not playing but then you become incredibly competitive with your own boys, I suppose," Hardwick conceded.
The 2004 Port Adelaide premiership player put the loan system on the table last year when Gold Coast was bereft of ruckmen - and Hardwick had the 206-centimetre Samson Ryan at Richmond for his first AFL season with little chance of playing an AFL game.
"Anything that gives a young player an opportunity to play the game, I love," Hardwick said.
"We've got a young kid by the name of Samson Ryan that we'd love to loan them. At the end of the day this kid – we're really excited about what he's going to bring – but we've got (Callum) Coleman-Jones, we've got Mabior Chol, we've got Samson.
"So he's sitting there playing forward in VFL footy. Not that I'd like to give them Samson if he's playing against us, but anything that gives a player the opportunity to play at AFL (level) we should look at, absolutely."
Loan systems are common in European football with the condition a player does not appear in games against his original club.
The sting in the loan system is in the detail. Had Port Adelaide loaned untried ruckman Sam Hayes to West Coast in a mid-season move, does he return to Alberton to cover the loss of lead ruckman Scott Lycett had his shoulder injury unfolded in round 14 rather than 4? Or does the AFL - for "integrity" reasons - demand Hayes finish the season at West Coast and Port Adelaide limp to September with makeshift ruckmen Charlie Dixon, Jeremy Finlayson, Todd Marshall ... and Sam Powell-Pepper?
Risky business this list-management caper.
If Hayes was ordered back to Alberton immediately, West Coast would return to its original problem. The system quickly fails.
Each of these mid-season recruiting models have jagged edges, some sharper than others.
Clearly, the mid-season draft option has the least drawbacks for AFL clubs.
There also is the thought that AFL clubs get to start a season with 44 players and - excluding COVID difficulties - no club would ever play all 44 (and in some cases should not because the development of particular players would be compromised by throwing them into the deep end of an AFL game).
The art of list management is to get the right 44.
Like a coach has to work the 23 he takes into a game with no half-time adjustments from outside this 23, the list manager should do the same with 44 from the moment the AFL home-and-away season starts in late March.
As Ken Hinkley would say, then you do indeed get what you deserve - reward for astute list management that has factored every contingency; and pain for failing to plan for the unexpected.
