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Find your Sport Nation frequencyWhy Healy believes the AFL draft requires a lottery
SEN • July 17th, 2025 6:30 pm
Does the AFL draft require a shake up?
With the father-son rule, Northern academies and next-gen academies all in play, the draft has been highly compromised over seasons past, and with a suspected glut of talent entering the 2025 class with rights already attached, there may be a need for a reshuffling at the core of the national draft.
Beyond the talk of player rights, the draft has also held firm on its traditional stance regarding the draft order, with the team that finishes at the bottom of the AFL ladder receiving the first pick, with higher selections rewarded to worse teams in accordance with the AFL ladder.
That being said, the manner of guarantee in the order of selection and pick rights raises questions surrounding the nature of bottom-end teams, potentially shifting their motive towards a better selection once eliminated from finals contention.
As the concept of tanking in order to receive high-end draft picks remains on the agenda, Gerard Healy suggests that a lottery-based format should be introduced, ruling out the guarantee for bottom sides to receive the top pick and therefore removing the notion of tanking.
A similar system is currently in place within the NBA, as teams within the bottom 14 of 30 (ranked by overall record) enter a lottery system, with three teams carrying the worst records entering with the equal highest odds to win the lottery, and the 14th worst entering with the least.
“(The draft is) a real problem, and I think that the quicker we go to the lottery system the better,” Healy told SEN Sportsday.
“I know the AFL don’t want to do it, but it would save a lot of issues.
“I also think that the AFL should acknowledge that sometimes the hardest climb is to get out of the quicksand from 12th even through to sixth.
“Sometimes, you can get to eighth, and you can get there because you got a good draw, but there’s no way known you’re going up the ladder to win finals.
“We’ve seen that so many times. We saw it with the Saints, we saw it with the Tigers under Frawley, seen it with Essendon, pop up not quite right.
“If you add a good coach, and that good coach actually keeps you in the quicksand, that’s the worst thing you can do, because you never get the A grade talent.
“I said this about two months ago, I think the AFL with Greg Swann should do a deep dive into all pathway and throw the draft in as well, because to me, the draft isn’t working.”
As it stands, the West Coast Eagles are all but guaranteed to receive the first overall pick, requiring at least three wins from their last six games to move out of last place given results permit.
