The Tasmania Devils will reportedly need to trade for established players from the outset — unlike Gold Coast and GWS — while it’ll have up to $1.5 million in sign-on bonuses outside the salary cap.
The Suns and Giants had a suite of first-round picks ahead of their AFL inception in the early 2010s, loading their lists with young talent and spending their first several years in the competition at the bottom of the ladder.
The AFL’s two most recent expansion sides were also allowed access to an uncontracted player from each other club.
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However speaking on Fox Footy’s Midweek Tackle, Herald Sun journalist Sam Landsberger revealed the Devils will be required to use their draft picks as currency instead of being able to poach rival players in a “win-win for the competition”.
“What I can tell you tonight is it’s going to be very different to Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney,” Landsberger began on Midweek Tackle.
“This is a clear mandate from the AFL: ‘We cannot have a team come in and win wooden spoon after wooden spoon and be uncompetitive and basically unwatchable.’
“My understanding is the big difference is that they’re going to get very similar draft concessions — it might be picks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 and 11 — but they’re going to have to trade away multiple of those picks.
“It’s a win-win for the competition. Tasmania is good straight away — they’d have to offload picks 5, 6, 7, 1 and 2 and bring in established stars of the game.”
It would help rebuilding clubs when Tasmania enters the AFL in 2028 as they’d still receive draft picks in line with where they finish, whereas struggling sides during drafts when Gold Coast and GWS had a plethora of early picks were denied such access to top-end talent.
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“The knock on effect is if you are at ground zero and in rebuild mode when this club comes in. So if you’re West Coast or North Melbourne now and Tassie as coming in, if it was like it was 10 years ago, you’re basically stuffed. The handbrake goes on your rebuild,” Landsberger explained.
“Under this model, you’re not locked out of the top 10 of the draft. You can trade some players who aren’t going to be there when you’re contending and really dominate that pointy end.
“So you’ve got a Tasmanian team with not too many kids that mature enough to compete, and you don’t absolute sabotage the clubs at the bottom.”
It comes as the Herald Sun’s Jon Ralph reported Tasmania will have between $1 million and $1.5 million in sign-on bonuses outside its salary cap spending to attract opposition players — a luxury it’ll be afforded for a single season.
The AFL salary cap is set for $18.4 million in 2027 and will rise again in 2028.
Chief Herald Sun reporter Mark Robinson on Fox Footy’s AFL 360 suggested North Melbourne young gun Colby McKercher, who’s from Tasmania, “could be the first $2 million player”.
“The salary cap is going through the roof … these are the kind of Tasmanian players they’ll go after,” Robinson said.
Clubs have reportedly ticked off Tasmania’s extra cap space given it’ll boost the value of compensation picks they get for departing players.
“The bigger the sign on bonus to their player, the bigger the compensation pick they will get back,” Ralph said on Midweek Tackle.
“You remember Gary Ablett went to the Gold Coast and Geelong got two first-round picks because it was in the top tier of compensation.
“There will be a similar system. Those clubs will say: ‘Fantastic. Yes, we’ll lose some quality players, but we get elite draft picks’.”
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