Australian Football League draft

The Australian Football League draft is the annual draft of unsigned players, especially new nominations, by Australian rules football teams that participate in the main competition of that sport, the Australian Football League (AFL).

History

When the competition was known as the Victorian Football League (VFL), the league introduced the first incarnation of a draft system in 1981, where teams had two selections each of interstate players determined by reverse finishing position order.

The draft was introduced as an equalisation strategy in response to the increasing transfer fees and player salaries at the time, which in combination with declining attendances threatened to derail the league. It was also a result of the failure of country zoning, introduced in 1967, which had led to a systematic inequality whereby the clubs with the best zones, like Carlton and Hawthorn, could dominate over clubs with poorer zones like Melbourne.

In 1986, the first of the modern VFL Drafts was held. The draft was run in conjunction to the existing zone system. Players from West Australian Football League and the new West Coast Eagles were excluded from the 1986 draft, with the Eagles able to recruit up to 35 West Australian players with no more than 6 players from any single WAFL club. The other new club for the 1987 VFL season, the Brisbane Bears, received 6 concessionary picks before the other clubs and exclusive access to all Queensland based players.

2006 AFL draft

The 2006 AFL draft is a recent national draft of the Australian Football League. The AFL draft is the annual draft of talented players by Australian rules football teams that participate in the main competition of that sport, the Australian Football League.

The 2006 AFL draft is noted as being the second "superdraft" since the draft system's inception, due to the wealth and depth of talent.

The AFL pre-season draft, rookie draft and trade week also occurred during the 2006/07 Australian Football League off-season.

Trades

2006 national draft

The 2006 national draft was held on 25 November 2006. Carlton Football Club had the first selection, choosing Bryce Gibbs from the Glenelg Football Club.

2007 pre-season draft

2007 rookie draft

References

1994 AFL draft

The 1994 AFL draft consisted of a pre-season draft, a national draft, a trade period and a rookie elevation. The AFL draft is the annual draft of talented players by Australian rules football teams that participate in the main competition of that sport, the Australian Football League.

In 1994 there were 97 picks to be drafted between 15 teams in the national draft. The Fremantle Dockers were given the first pick as they were to compete for the first time in the 1995 AFL season.

1994 pre-draft selections

1994 national draft

1995 pre-season draft

1995 uncontracted and concession player selections

As part of Fremantle Football Club's impending entry to the AFL in the 1995 AFL season, clubs that lost uncontracted players to the new side were allocated a 16-year-old concession selection to compensate them for their loss. These players were otherwise not eligible to be drafted until the following draft. Fremantle and Essendon Football Club arranged a deal where they would not recruit any uncontracted players from clubs below Essendon on the ladder, to allow Essendon the chance to have the first selection in the concession selections, which they used to recruit their future captain and leading goalscorer, Matthew Lloyd.

AFL (video game series)

The AFL video game series is a series of Australian rules football video games based on the AFL. Released originally by Beam Software, it has since been developed by several other game developers.

Games in the series

Aussie Rules Footy

It was the first AFL video game. The game involves playing a game of Australian rules football from a third-person perspective, with the ability to perform the basic actions of a typical player of the sport. The game can be played by one person, or by two players against each other. There is also a kick to kick mode, and a season mode where one to six players can play multiple games in a season finishing with a grand final. It was developed by Beam Software, and was published by Mattel.

AFL Finals Fever

It was released for Windows PC only on 9 June 1996. You could play as one of the 16 clubs of the 1996 AFL season. It was also the last video game in the series to feature the Fitzroy Lions and the Brisbane Bears as playable teams before they were merged. The game was also the first game to be developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and was published by Cadability.

Draft (sports)

A draft is a process used to allocate certain players to sports teams. In a draft, teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players. When a team selects a player, the team receives exclusive rights to sign that player to a contract, and no other team in the league may sign the player.

The best-known type of draft is the entry draft, which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league. Depending on the sport, the players may come from college, high school or junior teams or teams in other countries.

An entry draft prevents expensive bidding wars for young talent and ensures that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive. To encourage parity, teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft, sometimes with a "lottery" factor to discourage teams from purposely losing.

Other types of drafts include the expansion draft, in which a new team selects players from other teams in the league; and the dispersal draft, in which a league's surviving teams select players from the roster of a newly defunct franchise.

Conscription

Conscription, or drafting, is the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

In China, the State of Qin instituted universal military service following the registration of every household. This allowed huge armies to be raised, and was instrumental in the creation of the Qin Empire that conquered a large area of what is now China in 221 BC.

Conscription is controversial for a range of reasons, including conscientious objection to military engagements on religious or philosophical grounds; political objection, for example to service for a disliked government or unpopular war; and ideological objection, for example, to a perceived violation of individual rights. Those conscripted may evade service, sometimes by leaving the country. Some selection systems accommodate these attitudes by providing alternative service outside combat-operations roles or even outside the military, such as Zivildienst (civil service) in Austria and Switzerland. Most post-Soviet countries conscript soldiers not only for Armed Forces but also for paramilitary organizations which are dedicated to police-like domestic only service (Internal Troops) or non-combat rescue duties (Civil Defence Troops) – none of which is considered alternative to the military conscription.

Draft (politics)

In elections in the United States, political drafts are used to encourage or pressure a certain person to enter a political race, by demonstrating a significant groundswell of support for the candidate. A write-in campaign may also be considered a draft campaign.

Political history of draft movements

The movement to draft Dwight D. Eisenhower

Movements to draft five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower to run as a candidate for President of the United States appeared in both the Democratic and Republican parties in 1948 and again during 1951. Eisenhower did his best to ignore them, but Henry Cabot Lodge entered Eisenhower in the 1952 New Hampshire Republican primary without the general's authorization. Eisenhower won all the Republican delegates and defeated Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, who had campaigned intensively in the state, by a vote of 50% to 38%. Eisenhower told a reporter, "Any American who would have that many other Americans pay him that compliment would be proud or he would not be an American", and announced his candidacy the next day. He defeated Adlai Stevenson — himself drafted as the Democratic nominee — in November 1952.