National AFL Masters Carnival
After some consternation about whether I should play or not, I made the decision a few weeks ago to play in this year's National AFL Masters Carnival in Coffs Harbour in October.
I wasn't sure if I could afford the time and money to go to the tournament, but in keeping with the general theme this year of getting my life back, I decided I would register for it, which at the moment feels like the right thing to do.
This is because I've really put a lot of time and effort into getting the most out of this year from the point of view of playing AFL. I've only missed one game all season (the weekend me and Joey went to Adelaide), I've put in heaps of training with Alex Holness and with Newcastle/West Wallsend BDAFL team (usually 2 nights a week skills and agility training), and I also played in the pre-season and AFL 9's comp.
I'm at the point where I feel like my skills are as good as they've been in many years, as has my fitness (despite having TWO fucking colds during the winter). A downside however is that I'm now dealing with several niggling injuries - other than managing the shoulder, which will be with me forever, I also have some plantar fasciitis in my feet, and I have repeatedly sprained my right thumb, resulting in a little bit of 'goal-keepers' thumb. The thumb is a recurrence of an injury I had in about 2009 when I first moved to Melbourne.
But I feel that if I hadn't registered for the Masters Carnival, I would have regretted it. I'm really looking forward to it, and because I've put so much time and effort into training, I feel like I can have a positive impact on the team and feel good about my contributions to the side. I also feel that if I ever now let my skills slip, that I will have a lot of trouble trying to get them back to a decent level, and the Masters Carnival would let me test myself in that sense - are there any areas I need to work on, how is my fitness, what is my game awareness like, etc.
There is a chance you can play at least three games, and hopefully up to six games of AFL across three competition days. It will also give me the opportunity to see Coffs Harbour, and I'll be taking my golf clubs, mountain bike and surf board with me (although I honestly think I might be so fatigued after playing two games of footy on the competition days to actually do any of that!)
It's also a good way for me to bond with the existing Hunter Masters guys, and meet some new people in Masters generally. It's in the Uni semester break, so I can get away from teaching, marking, and Newcastle for a while, and I'll be living the dream of playing, talking, thinking AFL for a week! It also runs the week after the AFL Grand Final, so it's the perfect way to come-down after the few weeks that will lead into that. Still need to make plans for the AFL Grand Final by the way...
But yeah, super excited to get involved and play in a competitive environment for a week long festival of the boot.
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AFL Free Agency
Aside from the possible changes to playing rules, probably the most talked about issue in the AFL over the last few weeks has been around player free agency and compensation picks, and priority picks for poor-performing clubs.
I understand why the Players Association argued for free agency, but I believe it has created many unintended consequences. As I heard Bob Murphy say on a podcast this week, free agency was originally introduced to help those players who might be struggling to get a game in a very good side to move to clubs where they would have more opportunity, improving the overall talent distribution and competitive balance of the league.
In fact, what has happened is the reverse. Free agency has resulted in very good players moving from poorly performing clubs to the top clubs at the end of their contract in order to chase on-field success. The classic example this year is the rumoured move of Tom Lynch from the Gold Coast to Richmond.
This has naturally reduced competitive balance, as player talent concentrates in the better teams, and we end up in a situation where commentators and the league is now looking for solutions to improve competitive balance.
Before looking at methods to address the issue, I will say on the record that I think introducing player free agency was a mistake. The competitive balance of the league was trending very well before its introduction, and I believe it was only introduced because the players wanted to be more like the American model of free agency, which gives power to the players. While I don't want to deny the players the ability to have some control over their playing careers, there is significant benefit in not giving complete control to the players - it improves the likelihood of players moving clubs, hence reducing club loyalty, which has been fundamental to the competition for many years. It's also possibly indicative of a neo-liberal or individualistic tendency of the competition, where the benefits of the individual are prioritised, at the cost of collectivist sentiments where player movement policies are put in place to benefit the whole competition.
Again, I'm not arguing for the transfer model, where clubs retain rights over a player even when their contract ends, but this half-assed system that we currently have doesn't seem to benefit anyone. The league doesn't benefit because of the loss of competitive balance, the clubs don't benefit accordingly (especially those at the bottom of the ladder), and the players don't benefit either. Tom Lynch is still at the behest of his club - he's a restricted free agent, but Gold Coast may still choose to match the offer from Richmond. My understanding is that if Lynch still wants to leave after the Suns match any offer, then the player enters the pre-season draft, and could end up at any club (in this case it would be Carlton) rather than going to the club of their choice. Free agency also introduced the unsightly situation of off-contract players engaging with clubs during the current season, and clubs being forced into a position where, if they become aware that a player is talking to another club, they may not select that player because the player might not be with the team after the current season.
The current mechanism to address player movement in free agency is to give the clubs that lose the player a compensation pick somewhere in the draft. Where that pick ends up I think is chosen by the AFL and is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. The compensation pick to me seems like the AFL was afraid of going 100% into the NBA model, and so introduced this level to try and return some power to the clubs. So I don't like free agency at all.
Another unintended consequence of free agency is that, because of the loss of competitive balance that results from the best players at poor clubs moving to the top teams, the league now has to look at additional mechanisms to restore competitive balance. So arguments around priority picks have resurfaced. Priority picks are additional picks in the draft that are awarded to poorly performing clubs in the belief that it will give them more young talent. There has already been much debate around priority picks, because it would seem to incentivse tanking for clubs that are not doing well, especially if the priority picks are awarded at the top of the first round, which effectively gives a club the first two picks at the start of the draft. So other ideas are to give the priority picks mid-way through the first round, or at the end of the first round.
Carlton and the Gold Coast look like candidates for priority picks in the draft this year. Some commentators seem to think that the priority pick is not an effective way of helping under-performing clubs improve, or that under-performing clubs should be given access to mature age players instead of rookies. But I like the idea of priority picks, and I like them before the first round, so long as it can be ascertained that a club didn't tank in order to get them. Obviously this is incredibly hard to establish, but one idea to counter that is the suggestion that a priority pick would only be introduced if a club won, say 4 games a year for 5 years on average.
I also don't mind the idea of giving under-performing clubs access to established players in other leagues, even if that means that those clubs are allowed to have an extended playing list and salary cap.
All this seems like unnecessary mechanisms on top of mechanisms, and some people say we need to overhaul the entire system. I agree with them, but my idea of overhauling the entire system is to simply GET RID OF PLAYER FREE AGENCY. We never had it for a very long time, and the league was fine. It hasn't been used in the way that it was supposed to when it was introduced, and it has compromised competitive balance, which doesn't benefit anyone.
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