Archetypal stories teach lessons that people know deep down to be true. When sport is played in its purest form, it does the same thing. An archetype of this time of year is the premiership cup as the Holy Grail.
The story of the Holy Grail has been analysed by Joseph Campbell in the Power of Myth and millions of other people over centuries, but it’s essentially the story of people’s search for a precious object. The story is replete with life lessons. One early in the tale stems from how the knights begin their search: “Each entered the Forest Adventurous at that point which he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no way or path.” The clear lesson here is that for people to reach their full potential (that is, attain the precious object), they need to take on the biggest challenge they can reasonably handle.
Instead of an analogy between the Holy Grail and the premiership cup, I can’t help but link it to free agency and the flaws it has created in the player trade market. The foremost is that the best available players regularly go to the best clubs. Next year, Tom Lynch looks set to join Richmond, who could be back to back premiers by season’s end, Hawthorn is confident of landing a mature-age target and the rumour mill has it that Steven May is going to end up in a Magpies jumper in 2019.
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This is in direct contrast to the way the knights in the Holy Grail enter the forest at the point which looked scariest and most challenging to them.
To be clear, I don’t begrudge players who decide they want to play for a top club. Particularly, I don't begrudge it when players have been drafted to underperforming clubs, have given them a considerable amount of time and may not believe that success is within reach in the time they have left at the top. It’s the logical thing to do. But the AFL needs to look at ways to make it much more challenging for an elite player to move to a top four club than it is now.
The salary cap was meant to be the prohibitive factor in free agency. But the AFL has miscalculated the importance players place on money as opposed to team success. Further, it’s important to look not only at free agency, but trade as well. Simply, many trades happen because the threat of free agency looms large. May, for instance, isn’t a free agent until the end of next year, but might be traded this year because otherwise he gets to walk to his club of choice next year anyway.
In the AFL, the most exciting parts of the game revolve around risk. When a player takes a speckie on an opposition player's shoulders, the crowd gasps because of the risks involved. The player doesn’t really know how the pack is going to move, what position he’s going to be pushed into or how he’s going to land. It's one of those moments in the game that force the crowd to be completely present and engrossed by the contest. But a desire for risk shouldn’t be limited to the playing field.
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A player moving to a new club should feel that success is a possibility, not a fait accompli. Jake Lever’s trade to Melbourne is a case in point. Clearly, he wanted to play for a successful club. He analysed the coaching staff, list and club operations and landed on the Demons. Even though they were outside the top eight then, he made a good decision. He’s now on the comeback trail from a knee reconstruction, but he’s going to be part of an exciting club for the next decade. Lever took a leap of faith. He didn’t know with any certainty that things would pan out as they have for Melbourne this year.
The AFL doesn’t have to go from one extreme to the other on free agency and trading. Players deserve some control over where they play after a certain period. But being up the top of the ladder has proved to be incredibly deflationary to player payments. The AFL needs to find a new way to ensure that players take a leap into the unknown, rather than follow a path already shored up by others when moving clubs. Like the archetypal stories, deep down, they'd know this to be true.
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