Essendon have asked for draft assistance. This is why they should get it

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.