COACH Paul Roos says he fully supports the idea of having a draft lottery for the bottom four teams.

Roos believed it was the best way to determine which team should gain the No.1 draft pick at the end of each season – and help end any tanking talk in the media and football public.  

“I’ve said that for years. It’s clearly the best formula, for mine. I’ve been a massive supporter of that for the last 10 years – ever since the tanking of whatever people want to talk about. It’s already started again this week and I think it’s a clear solution,” he said.

“The debate then is ‘do you tank from the fifth worst team to the fourth worst team?’ Do you try and go down the ladder to get in the lottery – that’s the next phase of it.

“But I think having that system certainly clears up a lot of the intrigue around the end of the season and what teams are going to do, because you’re just not guaranteed the No.1 draft pick.”

But Roos stressed that preparing for the following season - like sending players in for early operations - was not tanking.

“Sometimes people can construe putting players in for operations [as tanking]. When you’re out of finals contention and there are four or five rounds to go, you often are thinking about the next year," he said.

“You’re not thinking about the draft or the getting the [No.1] draft pick. You’re actually thinking ‘well, if I can get player X, Y and Z in for an operation, they’re going to start training on November 1’. So that’s very, very different [to tanking] and that’s about setting the team up.

“If the consequence is that you drop from 12th to 14th or 15th, then the bonus is the draft pick, but it’s not the reason you actually do it. I don’t think any coach coaches to lose. What they do is coach for next year and by doing that, you’re playing young kids and putting guys in for operations.

“That’s where the talk starts, because it is impossible to manufacture losing. It’s easier to lose than it is to win, but it’s not that easy to say 'we’re going to lose the next six or seven games in a row', because in order to do that, it becomes so obvious what you’re doing that it’s ridiculous.

“I just think it’s more about thinking about next year and not worrying about games in the here and now - that’s where the noise starts.”