Fixing the Draft

The problem as it needs to be dealt with is that the current system of determining the pick order in the national draft as the inverse of final standings provides motivation for teams to “tank”. Now no team will openly admit to doing so, but there will always be talk and suspicion of teams not trying their best to win and quite frankly, this brings the game into disrepute.

I can see a solution to this problem that is rather simple, yet have never seen it proposed by others. For each round of the draft, one should simply assign picks to teams in a random order.

Suddenly there is no motivation to throw games, and the second most desirable position to finish a season is now 2nd, instead of 16th, as it should be. This solution also has the benefit of being completely fair in any way possible. The concept of rewarding weak teams with earlier draft picks was initially introduced in order to equalise the competition. But now with all AFL players having made their way through the draft system, the competition has been equalised, and so there is no benefit (and only a loss, since teams which follow the morally dubious option of tanking are rewarded) to continue to assign draft picks in this fashion. Hence I advocate adopting the method of random allocation of draft picks to clubs.