THE GILLETTE AFL Trade Period is done and dusted for another year and the sense of relief is palpable.
And it begs the annual question of whether the format is right and if nearly four weeks of AFL horse-trading is too long.
The answer is that there is no answer. Depending on where you sit in the AFL landscape, the trade period can be too long, just long enough or, perish the thought, could last that bit much longer.
Primarily, because the trade period is for the players, perhaps their perspective should override all others.
In any other field of professional endeavour, the process of highly-paid individuals changing their employer can take weeks, and often up to several months. 'The quicker the better', which was the operating philosophy behind the former one-week trade period has been replaced by a near month-long period where at least officially, players can consider their options.
Which of course, is not to deny that much of the wheeling and dealing takes place in the weeks and months leading up to the trade period.
One player manager made this key point about why they need as long a period as is practical. "These are huge life-changing decisions and they need to be able to collect a lot of information and impressions to inform those decisions," he said.
"Often, they're in an emotional state that is not always balanced as they react to difficult news and the prospect of separation and relocation."
In other words, to put the managers and clubs in the same location, with say, 72 hours to do the deals, would not be fair on the players even though such an arrangement would likely perfectly suit many of the other stakeholders.
Certainly, that is the way many of the big trades in Major League Baseball are fashioned. Baseball's big off-season event is what they call the winter meetings, at which player managers and the clubs meet for about a week and it is where the majority of the deals get done.
Particularly notable about these winter meetings is that they take place about a month after the season, giving the World Series participants the time to prepare and the winner time to celebrate.
It's an arrangement that would suit veteran Gold Coast list manager Scott Clayton.
"Time pressure makes deals happen," Clayton said, drawing an analogy with putting your house up for auction. "When there is no pressure to complete a deal, no one closes anything."
This year's AFL free agency period started the Friday after the Grand Final but even then, players such as Lance Franklin didn't wait that long. 72 hours after winning a premiership with Hawthorn, he signalled his intention to join the Sydney Swans.
Free agency was a hard-fought victory gained by the players in their most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2011, but the subsequent decision by the AFL to give compensation picks to clubs that lost players has complicated the process.
"All it does is hold up the deals," said player manager Justin Reid from Elite Sports Properties, an advocate for a one-week exclusive free agency period followed by a fortnight of player trades.
The AFL would be happy enough with the extended trade period. It keeps the game front and centre of the sports news cycle at a time when motor sport, the spring carnival, cricket and the A-League would otherwise take centre stage. Factor in next week's announcement of the 2014 fixture and the League can claim to own October as well as February through September.
The fans can't seem to get enough, with the first day of free agency and the opening day of the trade period each attracting about 47,000 live streams of Gillette AFL Trade Radio through this website and the AFL app.
The media? They'll likely be happy to see the back of it. As long as the player exchange window is open, they need to cover it feverishly given the huge interest. Apart from a few assistant coaching changes, not much else happens in footy in October now that the CBA mandates that no team can return to training until the start of November. No skinfolds, no time trials and the International Rules series largely out of mind and sight, so the trade period is it.
And adding to the drama is that once the trade period is done, AFL players are pretty much locked in for the year. Soccer has the month-long trade windows in January and August, while baseball, the NFL and the NBA all allow trading until a particular point in the season.
The final days of those player exchange periods attract the same sort of frenzied interest as the AFL's, and that might be the next step if some footy agents and recruiters get their way.
Given their druthers, the trade period would open after the Grand Final, but clubs could trade current picks for future picks and perhaps even trade picks for players during the draft, which happens in the United States.
There is also agitation in some quarters for a mechanism for clubs to acquire players during the season, through some sort of mid-season draft.
But before further radical changes are considered, what should be remembered is that the 2006 player exchange period produced just six trades. This time 32 players found new homes through the trade and free agency mechanisms with several more to follow in the next month.
It is, as they say, good for football.
