Compensation picks for losing free agents may stay (afl site)

[one-eyed]

Compensation picks may stay

By Callum Twomey
afl.com.au
Saturday, February 2, 2013


CLUBS believe free agency compensation picks will return in 2013 but there has been a move to scrap draft selections handed to clubs who lose unrestricted free agents. 

There were calls during last year's first free agency period to abandon compensation selections, but clubs feel that is unlikely to happen in 2013.

Football managers met in December and discussed the free agency process, with clubs split on whether compensation for unrestricted agents should be dropped.

Under that proposal, West Coast would not have received a third-round draft selection for losing unrestricted free agent Quinten Lynch to Collingwood last year.

And although Hawthorn was unsatisfied with its third-round compensation selection for Clinton Young crossing to the Magpies, it would have got nothing for the unrestricted agent in this system.

Another suggestion was that only the top-10 paid players at each club should qualify for a compensation pick if they were to leave their club.

With the AFL's review of free agency on hold, the League told AFL.com.au there was "no rush" to inform clubs whether compensations picks would return and in what form. 

"For the simple matter of it only being February, clubs need to know by June/July if there's going to be picks going into the system or not, so we haven't had the discussion yet internally," AFL spokesperson Patrick Keane said.

Other questions around the free agency process continue to emerge, including:

- Whether a club can delist a player and then recruit him as a delisted free agent as a list management tactic
- Whether a delisted free agent can be recruited via free agency and put straight on a club's rookie list
- Whether the three-day window given to a club to match an offer for a restricted agent should be cut to one day

The AFL believed its first free agency period to be a success, with chief executive Andrew Demetriou saying the system had met its objectives.

"I think it is great for the game, it is great we are seeing some player movement which is what we encouraged," Demetriou said in October.
"I think it is a pragmatic, practical time in our evolution. A mature time for these things to happen."

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-02-02/life-in-compo-picks-yet