AFL CEO Gillon Mclachlan has clarified the league’s decision to reject Carlton and Gold Coast’s requests for a priority pick at this year’s draft.

The AFL Commission yesterday rejected the struggling clubs' proposal of securing an extra, early pick to fast-track their respective rebuilds.

“With these things you’re trying to look at the objective and a bit of the subjective assessment of the clubs and where they’re at,” McLachlan told SEN’s Whateley.

“If you help then you’re doing that at the expense of the competition generally.

“There was an assessment that the clubs had a lot of young talent, I think Carlton have got 18 first round picks and they’ll get the number one pick again this year.

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“Gold Coast have got 15 first round picks on their list and they’re going to get picks two and 15 this year if Tom Lynch goes to another club, which is I think accepted, so they’ll get pick 3 as well.

“So there was a view that they needed some mature bodies.”

The Blues and the Suns will instead receive priority access to two state level players each, as reported by SEN Time On host Sam McClure last month.