AFL CHANGES FATHER SON RULE TO DISARM CATS; ATTACK ON TRADITION CONTINUES
Ben Jensen 25 April 2007

By Ben Jensen ON ANZAC DAY, THE AFL has disgracefully announced it has changed the Father Son rule yet again, in an attempt to prevent teams such as Geelong maintaining sentimentalism and links with the past. Other clubs, primarily 'interstate' teams who joined the competition under a set of rules they agreed to meet, have long bleated about Geelong's recruits in Matthew Scarlett, Tom Hawkins, Gary Ablett and Nathan Ablett under the Father Son rule. "It ain't fair", they claim.

According to the AFL, the new system will work as follows:

• A club with an eligible father / son draftee declares its intention to select that player at the upcoming NAB AFL Draft that year;
• Each other club in the competition then has the option to bid which round selection it may use on that player, if they were to select him;
• The club with the father / son selection must then use its next available selection, after the lowest-choice bid made by any rival club, to confirm its choice of that player at the Draft.

In the case of boon recruit Tom Hawkins, it means the Cats would most likely have missed out on Joel Selwood. Selwood was taken with Geelong's first draft choice, that would almost certainly have been used to draft Hawkins. For less highly rated players such as Tim Callan it would mean the Cats probably wouldn't have bothered with recruiting him under the father-son rule, if it meant they were bound to 'match' any other club's bid just to recruit him to the club.

Geelong supporters are rightly outraged, as will their fellow supporters at other Victorian clubs when they become aware of the news. Of course, the requirements will vary for interstate clubs. Initial reactions were as follows:

Wayne33 : "..so in a way where does that now leave the players has to play a certain mount of games, I think that games standard may need to be abolished?"

bros: "@#%$ wits, fix something else that aint broke."

travelbug1: "... hmm wonder what would have happened HAD the clokes shaws of this world been of the talent of scarlett ablett? Imagine the complaints from eddie and malthouse" Ed Note: I agree; Funny how the AFL issues a presser at three minutes to twelve on the eve of an ANZAC Day match when his holiness Ed McGuire is busy with other duties

Kevcat: "Had we not had father-son picks---Scarlettt-Ablett---I suspect we would have finished low enough to have a priority pick---and that is the greatest rort of all.
Melbourne will most likely qualify for one this year despite being in the finals in six of the past nine years---and this only a year or two after they last got a priority pick used to nab McLean and Sylvia."

Kevcat again:
"James Hird's son a Blue
Nathan Buckley's son a Swan
Steve Silvagni's sons Pies.
I'd like to see that.
Wait for another rule change."

AFL PRESS RELEASE

AFL Football Operations Manager Adrian Anderson today announced the AFL Commission had approved a bidding system for Father / Son Draft Selections at its meeting in Brisbane last week.

Mr Anderson said the Commission had approved the changes to the Father / Son rules, after flagging its intention to consider a bidding system in April 2006 and calling for club feedback on the competition's rules and drafting procedures in January earlier this year.

"The AFL has long held the view that the father / son rule must be maintained in our game as our fans strongly identify with the sons of former champions coming to the club that their father represented with distinction," Mr Anderson said.

"From the time that Ron Barassi junior came to Melbourne in the early 1950s, supporters of all clubs have had a special interest in the son of a former great and that continues today with more than 25 players currently listed across our clubs as father-son selections, including such players as Jonathan Brown, Jarrad Waite, Rhyce and Heath Shaw, Jobe Watson, Brett Peake, Gary and Nathan Ablett, Brett Ebert, Joel Bowden and Luke Darcy.

"Equally, the key planks of our competition in the AFL Draft and the Total Player Payment Rules under the salary cap aim to equalise the 16 clubs, and it has become increasingly apparent that strong father / son selections can have a significant impact on a club's fortunes whereby a considerable benefit is received if a highly-rated player is not drafted at his market value.

"The AFL wishes to retain the strong history of the father / son tradition at AFL clubs, while also recognising that players taken with these selections should be chosen at their appropriate market value in the year they are eligible to be drafted," he said.
Mr Anderson said the bidding process to be adopted would be as follows:

A club with an eligible father / son draftee declares its intention to select that player at the upcoming NAB AFL Draft that year;

Each other club in the competition then has the option to bid which round selection it may use on that player, if they were to select him;

The club with the father / son selection must then use its next available selection, after the lowest-choice bid made by any rival club, to confirm its choice of that player at the Draft.

Mr Anderson said all clubs who wished to bid on a father-son selection were bound by the choice they nominated, meaning:

1. If no rival bid was made by any club, the father / son selection is chosen with the last pick of that club in the draft.
2. If the club with the father - son selection declines to match the lowest selection nominated, the club that made that successful bid must take the player with that selection at the draft, unless he is selected earlier in the draft.

Mr Anderson said the adjustment that a club could take a father-son nomination with their last pick, if no other club made a bid for that player, aimed to enable a greater willingness for clubs to choose the sons of former greats, when previously they may not have used a compulsory round three selection for that choice.

Separately, Mr Anderson said the Commission had also removed the previous requirement that a club must use any Draft selection it had received in a trade, at that year's Draft.

"The recent history of the Draft has shown that this rule has proved to be a disincentive to trading and player movement, whereby later-round picks are not offered as part of trades, as clubs were unwilling to commit to late-round selections," he said.

"This requirement has been removed, with the notification that clubs must still have a minimum of three selections at every draft."

WATCH HAWKINS' DEBUT GAME OR HIS STANDOUT SECOND MATCH ON DVD - $34.95 + P&H

ROUND 2 - GEELONG V CARLTON DVD $34.95 AUD

ROUND 3 - MELBOURNE V GEELONG DVD $34.95 AUD

MEMBERSHIP UPDATE

AS OF 16/4/2007 GEELONG HAD 27,459 MEMBERS, UP 1,921 (7.5%) FROM 25,538 MEMBERS LAST WEEK (10/4/2007). TARGET: 32,291 (4,832 TO GO!)

BUY A MEMBERSHIP - http://gfc.com.au

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE MATCH

POST A MESSAGE

READ GUESTBOOK