A MID-SEASON trade period could come into the competition as soon as next year after the AFL and AFL Players' Association agreed in principle on its introduction as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The CBA, which runs through to the end of 2027, will see players receive a 37 per cent pay increase over the life of the deal, with the average salary to increase from $387,000 in 2022 to $519,000 in 2027.
As part of the announcement on Thursday, the League confirmed there would be further discussions with clubs over a mid-season trade period after both parties agreed on the new player movement mechanism.
"We will work through it. We've had the discussion with the players' association and in principle we're there, we now want to work with the players' association and the clubs on how it might look. There's certainly a chance that we could have it next year and we'll do that work over the next few months," incoming AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon said.
Dillon told Gettable in June that there could be guardrails over a mid-season trade period pertaining to which players would be eligible to change clubs, with details still to be nutted out and consultation with clubs expected.
"At the moment all of those things are on the table. It could be open or we might want to put parameters around it. That's the detail that we'll work through with the clubs and also with the players' association just to make sure there's not any unintended consequences," he said.
"It will be great and it will provide opportunities but we want to make sure we work through all the permutations and combinations that could occur."
AFLPA boss Paul Marsh said players had seen the benefits of a potential mid-season trade window.
"We spoke to them all about this in our recent round of club visits and the players can see opportunity here with mid-season trading. We'll just work through the details as Andrew said and I'm sure we'll land something that works for everyone," he said.
The new CBA will also include locked in three-year contracts for players selected in the first 20 picks of the national draft, confirming AFL.com.au's report last week that the addition will push up from the standardised two-year deals for all national draftees in the current rules.
Dillon said the rest of the national draft would remain at two-year initial deals and that more detail would be provided on the third-year payments.
Marsh said young players such as Nick Daicos and Harry Sheezel who outdo their standard contract within the first two years would still have the capacity to get appropriately paid.
"The payments will be based on performance so someone like Nick, who has obviously had an incredible first couple of years in the system, his payment will scale up based on his performance, the games played, the awards won and all that sort of stuff," he said.
"That's been an important part of this. It's not restraining them to a base level. It's rewarding performance."
