Exclusive Saints call for end to NSW, Qld Academies as part of draft overhaul

ST KILDA has stepped up its bid for a draft overhaul, calling on the AFL to abolish the northern Academies before this year’s draft and replace them with Next Generation Academy zones.

AFL.com.au can reveal that Saints president Andrew Bassat and chief executive Carl Dilena fronted the AFL Commission last week and, as part of their club update, presented a range of recommendations to improve the equality of the draft.

This year will see one of the most compromised pools in draft history with several Northern Academy, Next Generation Academy and father-son prospects featuring in a shallow talent crop, prompting the Saints to continue their crusade for a purer draft.

In doing so, the Saints said that the AFL’s current review of the NGA zones, which is set to be tabled to the AFL Commission in August as North Melbourne loses its Tasmania zone with the proposed entry of the Devils, should see Gold Coast, Brisbane, Sydney and Greater Western Sydney have their northern Academy access changed to be in line with other clubs’ NGA status where they only get priority access to Indigenous and multicultural players in their regions.

Under that plan, prospective top-10 picks such as Zeke Uwland from the Suns Academy and Daniel Annable from Brisbane would be in the open pool.

The Saints put forward multiple recommended changes, including:

• The “abolition” of Northern Academy zones ahead of the 2025 draft
• The inclusion of Queensland, NSW and the ACT in the redistribution of NGA zones under the League’s current NGA review
• Clubs be only able to match one bid in each draft on any Academy or father-son pick
• Clubs that finish in the top four be blocked from matching a bid on an Academy or father-son pick in the first round of that year’s draft

The Saints are not expecting wholesale change before this year’s draft, and the switch is viewed by rivals who are aware of the club’s plan as extremely unlikely, but the AFL has been looking at different options to help the draft as it introduces a new points system this year that will make it harder for clubs to match multiple bids.

Dilena told AFL.com.au: “We’re not trying to blow everything up. We’re trying to have the least amount of compromise as possible. Everyone recognises the bias to northern states to grow the game. We’d like to see the pendulum switch back.”

As part of its submission, St Kilda went back through history to see the impacts of zoning before the introduction of the national draft in 1986 opened up an era of more flags being shared around clubs. It noted the Academy “assistance was not necessary” for either Sydney or Brisbane, that it “cannot go on indefinitely” and that it was a collective responsibility of all clubs to boost participation rates at grassroots level.