Two weeks ago, Essendon wrote to the AFL with a cry for help, stating their case to be considered for a priority pick or special draft assistance.
Anyone with passing knowledge of football might ask “what took them so long?”. It is a letter that might have been penned almost any time in the past 20 fruitless years.
Anyone with a more detailed knowledge of football might ask, “How dare they?” They had bad injuries last year and an awful season this year, but that’s not enough.
On broad AFL measures of worthiness and how poor other recipient clubs of AFL draft largesse have been, one would scoff at the idea that a club that won six games last year after 11 in each of the two years prior could have this season of regret and ask for help.
But this is Essendon. Put aside how many games other clubs lost in successive years to prove how hopelessly bad they were, and think bigger picture: Essendon have not been successful for two decades.
Essendon’s letter, signed by the board, is an argument which distils to say we are down, and you have a lever for clubs to pull when they need help, so we are pulling it.
The AFL changed the system several years ago to make trigger points at which draft concessions and compensation would automatically be activated a secret. It was done to stop clubs tanking. To be clear, there is no suggestion Essendon is tanking. They are just not very good.
Dennis Denuto was then consulted to craft the AFL’s new compensation package trigger points. The Castle’s suburban lawyer also incidentally devised the AFL’s free-agency compensation picks so that no one ever completely knows what evidence you need to persuade the AFL about anything. It’s just the vibe.
Are Essendon that bad? Are they as bad as North Melbourne, West Coast, the Brisbane Lions or Gold Coast when they all got priority picks or extra AFL draft help? That depends on the metric you use.
On games won over a certain period? Probably not. But West Coast got help only years after winning a flag and having unwisely held on to old players for far too long. They were the architects of their own demise.
North got more help despite having already stockpiled multiple early draft picks over years and still going nowhere.
Gold Coast got help because, well, because they’re Gold Coast. They had never been good and, while waiting for them to be at least competitive, money was draining out of the competition at a rate that might have been a model for the suburban rail loop.
And the Brisbane Lions? Still a bit of a head-scratcher, that, but players were leaving the club at the time.
Essendon had finished in football’s mid-table no man’s land in 2023 and 2024. They then won six games last year with the longest injury list in the competition. It was also a year they spent arguing, “We would not be as bad as this if they were not so injured. Just wait until we get our players back”.
They have now won one game this year with what has also now become a deja vu injury list. Now they’re saying, “Actually we were as bad as that. In fact, we are worse. We are so bad we need your help. We are doing what we can. Look, we just sacked another coach”.
Essendon have openly stated they made the decision at the end of 2023 to rebuild and go to the draft. In one sense then, they chose the path they are on to go down the ladder to rise, so why should the competition do more to bail them out?
The counterargument is that this is how the draft system is supposed to work – you help the poor clubs with access to the best picks. But the draft alone is not enough, not when it is as mangled as it is by players pulled from the draft pool by academies and father-sons.
Essendon will probably finish bottom this year. If they call out Cody Walker and Dougie Cochrane on draft night, bids will be matched by Carlton and Port Adelaide. So the Dons will only get access to most likely the third-best player available.
What does help them this year, and something which has not yet been given time to affect the system, is another new rule that will mean that having had a bid for a player matched the Bombers will be given an extra second-round draft pick as compensation.
Essendon’s pitch to the AFL appears an ambit claim. Like a list rebuild, it is about playing the long game. Like West Coast and North before them, you apply for help this year in the hope you might get help next year.
But the strongest argument for giving compensation for Essendon now is that Tasmania is coming in next year. The draft pool will be devastated. If they don’t get more help now, just using the draft to get better next year and the year after will be immeasurably harder.
More emotively, the Bombers would tell the AFL, “You are giving everything to the new club and leaving a huge foundation club withering on the vine”.
Most persuasively, the Bombers could have added extra signatories to their letter to the AFL: the broadcasters. Are the businesses whose money underpins the game really happy with Essendon (and Richmond for that matter – but they are a bit different because of that whole three-flag dynasty thing) sitting at length at the bottom of the ladder?
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Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.