Forget the finals or the holidays, this is the most exciting and interesting time of the AFL year. This period, between the end of the finals series and the beginning of pre-season, is the silly season.

Just like giving presents during the festive weeks, the silly season consists of players, draft picks and suddenly now chief executives being swapped willy-nilly between clubs with big budgets, and even bigger ambitions.

But this is also becoming the most important period of the growing AFL calendar. It’s where the shadowy list manager can take centre stage.

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Richmond Football Club deserve this year’s success, as does coach Damien Hardwick and list manager Blair Hartley.

For a long period of time, the Tigers were woeful during the silly season. A lack of direction, and swathe of players in the lower half of their 22 that couldn’t live up to the Tiger army’s expectations. Yet, despite the anger and frustration that concluded their 2016 season, the club knew they had a winning formula, even if most others in the competition didn’t realise.

Mick Malthouse was faced with the same issue when he arrived at Carlton in 2013. He walked in the front door during silly season, and immediately wanted to replace 20 players. He could only get rid of three.

Silly season has always been a period of hope for the Blues, but its work remains unsuccessful.

Hawthorn tackled this challenge as well following the arrival of Alastair Clarkson. You could argue, there have been few list management and recruiting efforts as deliberate and precise as the Hawks from 2004 onwards.

In 2004, Clarkson swung the axe, trading and delisting most of whom were in his way. At the draft, he picked the two best young forwards in the country, Lance Franklin and Jarryd Roughead. Then he added a procession of skillful left-foot kicking machines. Added to future stars Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell, this was a team assembled for precision football and a long-term premiership window.



After they won in 2008, retirements, injuries and form issues hit the club’s tall pillars, so a stronger, more hardened spine was traded into the Hawthorn machine. In came David Hale, Josh Gibson, Ben McEvoy and Brian Lake, to go with the addition of class in Jack Gunston and Shaun Burgoyne. Three more premierships were added to a process that had begun in 2004.

In the same way, Richmond assembled a support crew that complemented their already star-studded spine. I’ll be honest, I had no idea who Jack Graham was even on grand final day, and didn’t realise Jacob Townsend had left Greater Western Sydney until he begun making the comp look an under 12s kick in the park by the back end of the season.

Before the finals, most of the Tigers’ ‘mosquito fleet’ wouldn’t fit into the best 22 of many other clubs, yet they were the reason they beat Adelaide.

What’s that old saying about a team of champions and a champion team? I might just ask Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing.

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So I’m going to stick my neck out: Essendon will be the Richmond of 2018.



The AFL is a copycat industry, and the Bombers have been putting together a list of players with the qualities of most premiership sides. They have a few speedy mosquitos of their own, as well as strong ball-winners.

This complements an almost unrivalled spine. Michael Hurley was All Australian this year, Joe Daniher was runner-up in the Coleman Medal, and Cale Hooker kicked 41 goals from full-forward, while the Dons have two more-than-adequate ruckmen in Tom Bellchambers and Matthew Leuenberger.

More importantly, the additions of Devon Smith, Adam Saad and potentially Jake Stringer only enhances the bottom portion of an already finals-ready team.

But unlike the Bulldogs last year, Richmond holds all the aces in silly season. With picks 15 and 17 in the draft, the Tigers have options. An investment in Josh Schache’s potential perhaps, or to find another unheralded mosquito?

But this is the list manager’s decision. The single most important person in silly season.

No pressure, but get it right and the premiership window could be open for a decade, like the Hawks. Get it wrong and join the Blues in a never-ending hole of list rebuilding.