The AFL will seriously consider allowing clubs to trade future draft picks - adopting a model from American sports - with a number of clubs and influential figures in favour of the right to trade draft selections a year in advance.

Essendon football operations general manager Rob Kerr has voiced support for the trading of future picks following the club's difficulties in striking a deal for Paddy Ryder, while Collingwood also favours the right to trade future draft picks.

Gold Coast list manager Scott Clayton is an advocate for allowing futures trading in the draft, and Greater Western Sydney's departing list manager Stephen Silvagni - headed to Carlton soon - is also open to the concept, as the league weighs up a number of potential changes to the trading/drafting free agency system.



Should the trading of future picks be introduced for 2015, it is likely to have major limits, such as that clubs could only trade one year in advance - a deal reached in 2015 could include a draft pick for 2016, but not 2017, for example.

Another proposal that the AFL is expected to consider is that clubs would be limited to trading one future selection - a first-round or second-round choice - in the course of a post-season.

While allowing the exchange of future draft selections - long established in the major American team sports - has been raised in the past, the AFL has opposed it, largely due to a concern that clubs would trade away their future prosperity if they were permitted to give up future choices.

But the prevailing view today is that clubs are far more sosphisticated about trading and drafting and that they have a better handle on the value of an early round pick. Further, there is recognition that the AFL could entertain a restricted form of future pick trading that would reduce the risks, with the benefit of giving clubs more options to close a deal.



There is also recognition within the industry that, with 18 teams and compensation selections, almost every team starts with only one pick inside 20 - and thus lacks "liquidity" in the trading market, particularly if the club is buying or selling a player of high value.



Essendon's Kerr said under the present system clubs had "only two picks of real value - your first round and second round," adding, "it stifles the trading a little bit. I think at times it restricts clubs that have a player that wants to leave."



Kerr expressed the view that the Ryder deal would have been completed more easily had the Dons been able to acquire a future choice from Port Adelaide. GWS, too, believed that it was short-changed somewhat in the Jono O'Rourke trade because Hawthorn could offer only its first pick, which was No.19.



The other argument voiced by one club official in favour of future pick trading was, due to the compensation system for the expansion teams - when Gary Ablett, Tom Scully et al went to the new teams as uncontracted players - the clubs have already dealt with a system in which future picks (compensation picks can be used in later years) were dealt.



The AFL's draft working group will discuss the prospect of introducing the right to trade future draft choices, along with a raft of other ideas and potential reforms.

The AFL draft working group includes Clayton, Geelong recruiting boss Stephen Wells, Adelaide football operations chief David Noble. It is chaired by AFL's head of integrity Brett Clothier.

