Priority picks, caps and new order: Radical draft plan to fix alarming AFLW ‘inequity’

This week’s AFLW Talking Points column is a sole Talking Point on a pressing matter: Competitive balance.

For the chasm that’s emerged between the best and worst teams four rounds into the 2025 AFLW season is significant.

Reigning premiers North Melbourne on Sunday registered its 16th consecutive AFLW win, comfortably accounting for Collingwood at Arden Street Oval. It came after dominant North wins over Fremantle (+100 points) and Port Adelaide (+72) the previous two weeks.

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The Kangaroos, who have a handy percentage of 492.1, are one of four undefeated teams, with Melbourne, Sydney and Hawthorn also sitting 4-0 with percentages all over 150.

Perennial contenders Adelaide and Brisbane haven’t been at their dominant best to date, but both still have a percentage of 134.

The bottom-eight teams – from Port Adelaide in 10th down to the Giants in 18th – have either won one game or none. The bottom six clubs all have a percentage of 60 or less.

Yes it’s a four-game sample size. But for Fox Footy expert Chyloe Kurdas – one of the great pioneers of the women’s game – the competition has hit an equity crossroads.

“What we’ve ended up with is a number of teams that are really strong and a whole bunch of teams who are nowhere near that level and are complete list turnovers away from being anywhere near the top four or even top eight,” Kurdas told foxfooty.com.au.

“At the moment when you’re predicting who’s going to be in the top four, you think Brisbane, Adelaide, North Melbourne, Melbourne, Hawthorn – the same clubs.

“We need to get the competition, pretty quickly, to a place where it’s harder to predict who’s going to be in the top four and top eight this year.”

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The AFLW roared into existence in 2017 – ahead of schedule – with only eight clubs: Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton, Collingwood, Fremantle, GWS Giants, Melbourne and Western Bulldogs. Three years later, the Kangaroos, Suns, Cats, Tigers, Saints and Eagles joined to make it a 14-team competition. By the end of 2022, all 18 AFL clubs had AFLW representation.

We expanded mightily quickly.

So while player skill has improved out of sight in the eight-and-a-half years since, the talent pool has never been more stretched, considering we’re now in the fourth season of an 18-team competition.

Kurdas believes there’s “been inequity from the start” of the AFLW.

“How each cluster of teams were built was very different with different context,” she said.

“There hasn’t been an equal playing field for everyone. We didn’t have 18 teams from the start, so all the talent was going to eight clubs. So the teams that have been in for longer have a greater and more distinct advantage because they’re more practised with their systems, they’ve been able to get more pre-seasons and seasons into their players.”

Season length is also important context.

The first three seasons saw clubs play seven home and away games. Five years later, another eight teams have been added, but only another five rounds are being played.

While that number will increase over the coming years under the AFLW CBA, it’s playing a key role in the current competitive imbalance – particularly for clubs hit hard by injuries.

“You’ve got to come into the season on form and finish on form – and that can be really challenging, particularly, if you’ve had a list rebuild,” Kurdas said. “It’s like we saw last year with the Western Bulldogs, who turned over one-third of their list and off-field administration — and did pretty well in the circumstances.

“Talent spread is different from the men’s competition. The best and the worst are further apart than the men’s game. So if you get injuries to your top-end talent, that impacts you way more than the men’s game because there’s such a broader range of talent.

“Look at Melbourne last year. Their first five weeks were poor because they had injuries to top-end talent then scraped their way through to ninth. But they probably didn’t have a ninth-placed list, closer to top-six. So if you look at their average form over the past few years and where they finished last year, it was a complete anomaly for them.

“You also have to consider the fixture. Look at a team like Sydney, who didn’t win a game in their first season, they then got a really easy fixture in their second year and finished eighth – and won their first final. It then meant they got the sixth-hardest fixture for 2024 – and after being impacted by injury, they win three games.

“If you have a bad year then the next season, you get an easier fixture then a hard fixture the year after – and if your talent isn’t quite up to it, you’re just going to keep going up and down the ladder. So your performance evens out over a couple of seasons because of the inequity in the fixture where we don’t play everyone once.”

It’s worth noting the Swans, due to their 2024 finishing position, earned Pick 4 in the draft, which they used to select WA star Zippy Fish, who looms as the early favourite to win this year’s AFLW Rising Star award.

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

So how can the AFL create more mystique around the AFLW to ensure more matches are more competitive, enthralling and, subsequently, enticing?

Tweak the draft, according to Kurdas.

There has already been a significant shift in this space over recent years, with the 2024 AFLW draft the first true national draft after the league moved away from an ‘opt-in’ model.

But Kurdas wants to see two significant — but temporary — changes to the draft.

Part 1 – Draft order based on a rolling three-year ladder

Like the boys draft, the AFLW draft order is determined by club finishing positions from the previous season.

Kurdas says the order, instead, should be based on the number of wins teams accumulate over a three-year period.

“When you factor in the inequities from where we started, the challenge of a shortened season, the compounding impact of a wide talent spread and the impact of injuries – all while still being in a not full-time, fully professional competition where injuries do occur a little bit more regularly – we need to look at recent form, as opposed to how you performed just last year,” Kurdas said.

“This is the third season where we’ve had 18 teams. So how about if every year the draft order is based on a rolling three-year form assessment? You would formulate your draft order based on average ladder finishings for the last three seasons.

“You can’t just do draft order based on last year’s performance, because there are so many compounding variables. Ladder position, in any one season, isn’t a true indicator of the ‘talent ladder’.”

Kurdas believes her proposed model “prevents a team that’s very good from getting easy picks” after a season impacted by personnel issues.

“It means there’s space for a club if they have a bad year due to injury,” she said. “For instance Melbourne wouldn’t get the ninth-highest pick, they’d get a pick based on where their talent probably sits.”

Kurdas also pointed to Brisbane’s situation in 2019 when Craig Starcevich’s team, primarily due to injuries, finished fourth on the five-team Conference B ladder with a 2-5 record. The Lions received Pick 3 – after featuring in both the 20117 and 2018 grand finals and before making finals in 2020 then winning the flag in 2021.

They used the pick to select Lily Postlethwaite, who was part of the Lions’ 2023 premiership side. In the same draft, the Lions took Belle Dawes and Cathy Svarc after acquiring early picks from Richmond and St Kilda in trades for Sabrina Frederick and Kate McCarthy, respectively.

“This club has played in six grand finals in their history. They had injuries, but did their list suddenly become untalented? No, they were still really talented, they just had a bad year with injuries – and we know that can handicap your season,” Kurdas said.

“Also teams like Essendon, who played finals last year, have a harder draw this year – and if they can’t match it and continue their form with a harder draw, are they really that high a placed team? They’re probably not yet.”

Part 2 – Priority pick help and salary caps

One of the key balancing tools in the men’s competition is the salary cap.

And while polarising, priority picks – which is now more officially referred to as ‘draft assistance’ – have also been effective. A big reason why the Gold Coast Suns are in the final six AFL teams this year is off the back of star midfield duo Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson, who the Suns took with the first two selections of the 2019 draft.

Kurdas believes it’s time for the women’s game to adopt both measures.

“I do think we need priority picks in the women’s game, as well as a salary cap to start to push talent out of clubs to help even things up,” she said.

“We’ve seen many examples in the men’s game where the players have been forced out because there just wasn’t enough room in the salary cap and the talent gets redistributed.”

Kurdas says the teams with the first two to four draft selections “should absolutely be given priority picks”.

“The talent spread between the best and worst teams in the competition, there’s just so much space,” she said.

“It wouldn’t be a permanent thing, but we’re at a period in time – until we get a salary cap that can have a broad and sustained impact – where we might need to be giving bottom two or bottom four on that rolling ladder a priority pick every year.”

What it would look like: Proposed 2025 AFLW indicative draft order

If we were to look at the past two seasons and four rounds in the AFLW – and we handed priority picks to, say, the first three clubs – this is what the top 10 of the 2025 indicative draft order would look like ahead of Round 5.

Pick 1 (priority): GWS Giants (3.5 wins since 2023)

Pick 2 (priority): Western Bulldogs (6 wins)

Pick 3 (priority): Collingwood (7 wins)

Pick 4: GWS Giants

Pick 5: Western Bulldogs

Pick 6: Collingwood

Pick 7: Gold Coast Suns (9 wins)

Pick 8: West Coast Eagles (9 wins)

Pick 10: Port Adelaide (10.5 wins)

The remainder of the first round, in order, would be St Kilda, Carlton, Richmond, Geelong, Sydney, Fremantle, Essendon, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and North Melbourne.

Kurdas believes the extra help is essential for a team like the Giants, who continue to face significant challenges in their AFLW journey, despite being one of the eight foundation clubs.

“The anomaly is the Giants. We assume there’s an equal playing field across the country in terms of game development, investment, where the talent is, et cetera,” she said.

“We know in the men’s game that talent in the Sydney market, in general, struggles. There’d be just enough men who come out of New South Wales to be on one AFL men’s list.

“So you add together the intersectionality of New South Wales as a non-traditional football state and gender, there are compounding challenges there for them, which is part of the reason why they’ve struggled so much in that market.”

The Eagles, conversely, could be out of the top 10 by season’s end should they continue their 2025 trajectory.

After conjuring just two wins in 2023 then four in Daisy Pearce’s first year as coach in 2024, the Eagles are 3-1 so far this season.

And while they face big interstate challenges across the back-end of the season – Melbourne (Casey Fields), Adelaide (Norwood Oval) and Sydney (Henson Park) – Kurdas believes the Eagles are well placed for a maiden finals berth, which would help justify her proposed move to a draft order based off a three-year average.

“West Coast this year are having a really good season and will go up the ladder, but had two building seasons the last two years,” she said.

“If their form continues this year and we got to the end of the season, they might not be the third-last or fourth-last team on the rolling ladder.

“You go on form, you go on where the talent is and you can even out the spread of players by looking at form over three years.”

HOW WOULD THE TOP CLUBS FEEL?

The perennial contenders for many years have been the Kangaroos, Lions, Demons and Crows, while the Hawks have quickly blossomed under coach Daniel Webster across the past two seasons.

So how would they feel about such a radical draft change?

Kurdas said they’d just have to reconcile it for the greater good of the competition.

“Women’s football has always had this really wide range of talent spread, even pre-AFLW,” she said.

“I played in a team that was really successful where we were in eight consecutive Division 1 grand finals. But you want to know you’ve been challenged and gotten the best out of yourself by playing against opposition who can match you.

“I look at a team like North Melbourne and how they played on Sunday … and I feel like they’re biggest opponent is themselves. How does that make you better as an athlete? You only get one chance at doing this in the game, you get 10 years to have a crack in the W and you can’t go back to do it again.

“The competition needs to challenge you to be the best player you can be and grow you into your potential.

“Maybe Melbourne and Brisbane and Adelaide can challenge North Melbourne, but that’s it. So how do they grow and get better and develop their coaching brains and footy IQ if they’re not being stretched and challenged by an opposition?

“So if I’m North Melbourne, I want better opposition – because I want to see what I can become.”

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