It is that time of the season where every man and his dog starts accusing teams of tanking games to get priority draft picks.
What is tanking? Tanking is where a coach pulls their best players from the field (or even the match), match up rookies vs stars and just playing to lose the game so they can get themselves a priority draft pick.
You see, one of the great things about AFL is the draft pick. The teams that finished lowest on the table get the 1st picks, the best teams get the last of the picks. What this does is, makes for a more even competition and each club generally has a success cycle.
What happens at the end of the year, where teams can no longer make the the top 8, some team’s tactics have a very sudden change and most people feel that they are tanking the rest of the season to get that all important pick.
Now if you were a coach and your season was in essence done (cant make top 8 ) would you continue to put players on the field that are carrying niggling injuries? or would you rather rest them, let them heal completely ready for next season and bring in some new faces to get the rookies blooded? If I was a coach, I would.
I just read this “Tanking? Long-term thinking’s ok” and one of they key notes straight away is, if you are in the top 8, guaranteed a finals berth and rested a player, which Geelong has done recently, then that’s ok but if you in the bottom 8, you are tanking.
Last nights AFL Footy Show started talking about the tanking debate and there were calls to changing the draft system to a lottery. Come on, you are kidding right?
As said earlier, one of the great things about our game is the fact that each year, teams are fairly even matched and for the weaker teams, the draft helps them get to be stronger teams.
Oh and just because you have the 1st pick, does not mean you are going to pick the best player. Have a look at Melbourne‘s number one pick Jack Watts. Played just 3 games this year and not really making any impact. Compare that to say Brisbane‘s Daniel Rich at 7th pick who is probably the favourite for the NAB Rising Star or even North Melbourne‘s Jack Ziebell (9th) and Liam Anthony (43rd)
In the end, leave the drafting system alone. If a coach starts to deliberately play to lose, I think the club needs to remove the coach and not put hope on who they will pick up for the next year.