PAUL Roos says the father/son rule should be an ‘all or nothing’ scenario, following changes made to it and the club academy players last week.
Speaking on Roos’ Views, the Melbourne coach said the father/son rule seemed like it was “becoming harder and harder”.
“I’m supportive of the father/son [concept] and I think it should stay, but I don’t think [it should be] such a complicated system now. Maybe they’re better just to scrap it – you’re either all in or all out,” he said.
“The academy is probably different. I’ve seen the evolution of the Swans academy and the northern states, and what the great work they do in terms of developing.
“A lot of those kids wouldn’t be playing AFL footy, if it wasn’t for the northern states academies, so again everyone has their own different views.”
Roos said he could understand why the AFL was attempting to make the competition as even as possible, but questioned why the father/son rule needed to be altered yet again.
“I can understand the rationale behind trying to even the competition up, particularly with free agency now,” he said.
“I think the AFL is finding that’s a real challenge and they can’t really fix that now. Once it’s in – it’s in. So how do they actually find different ways to even the competition up?
“Clearly things that they can change are the father/son [rule] and academy.”
The AFL released the key changes to the father/son and academy selections last week:
- The new bidding system assigns a points value to each individual selection in the NAB AFL Draft, based on an analysis of player salary data over the last 15 years, as an indicator of the relative ‘market’ value of players historically chosen at each draft pick.
- The clubs seeking to select a Father/Son or Academy player and match a bid lodged by another club must now use one or more subsequent selections, to the value of the points required, in order to secure the player.
- Round one selections will attract a discount of 20 per cent for the original club, while selections after round one will attract a discount equivalent to the discount for selection 18, meaning the further a player is nominated into the draft, the greater the discount for his original club and will increase the likelihood of later-round players being able to play for their nominated club.
- The AFL’s intention is for the process to occur live during the Draft, with the technology for this to occur currently in the development phase.
