THE AFL has moved to end any allegations of tanking by scrapping controversial priority draft picks, effective immediately.

The league says it will develop a "much stricter criteria" to help struggling clubs.

AFL operations manager Adrian Anderson said today the perception of tanking was one of the reasons for a change in the rules.

The league has steadfastly maintained teams have never tanked - deliberately lost games to gain access to early draft picks - but conceded the perception of an incentive to lose was damaging to the game.

Under the priority pick system, clubs were handed extra selections at the top end of the draft for finishing with four or fewer wins in a season.

Nick Riewoldt (2000), Luke Hodge (2001), Adam Cooney (2003), Brett Deledio (2004), Marc Murphy (2005), Dale Thomas (2005), Matthew Kreuzer (2007) and Tom Scully (2009) were all recruited with priority picks.

Last year West Coast jumped up the ladder with the assistance of young forward Jack Darling, who was selected with a priority draft selection.

The league said the priority pick was scrapped after clubs unanimously demanded its removal.

Improvement in talent-spotting on draft day was a key consideration in the latest rule change.

“After this current expansion period, the AFL believes that the balance for special assistance under the rules was no longer right for the competition,” AFL football operations manager Adrian Anderson said.



“The commission accepted a recommendation that stricter conditions for any special assistance should be developed,” he said.

Priority draft selections could still be granted in future under the discretion of the commission.

Anderson said a formula would be developed that will take into account such factors as a club’s premiership points over a period of years (with greater weight to recent seasons), its percentage over a period of years as another indication of on-field competitiveness (with greater weight to recent seasons), any finals appearances in recent seasons, any premierships in recent seasons and club injury rates in each relevant season.



Under the scrapped system, any team that accumulated 16 match points or less in a year was entitled to a selection prior to the second round of the national draft, while any club with two consecutive seasons of 16 points or less in a year, was entitled to a selection prior to the first round of the national draft.



Since 1997, when the rule was established in its current form, it has applied a total of 26 times across 14 seasons and been activated in all years, bar one season.



“The old rule had become a permanent feature of the draft that skewed the draft in favour of the bottom clubs of that particular year, relative to other clubs near them on the ladder,” Anderson said.



“The draft, along with the TPP and Salary Cap rules, are designed to ensure an even spread of talent between the clubs and clubs should not be over-compensated for a short period of poor performance.



“As clubs have become more sophisticated with talent identification and development of young players, the success around early picks in the draft has become much greater.”

Originally published as AFL scraps priority pick