THE AFL executive will be charged with putting forward a recommendation to the AFL Commission to decide whether to approve Melbourne's bid for a priority pick at the 2013 draft.

It is expected a sub-panel, including football operations boss Mark Evans, the League's head of game development Andrew Dillon, national talent manager Kevin Sheehan and total player payments manager Ken Wood, will help form the recommendation. 

It remains to be seen whether the commission will give out another draft selection to the struggling Demons, but club-level sources believe it is unlikely. 

Carlton president Stephen Kernahan and Hawthorn president Andrew Newbold have recently expressed strong reservations against the pick being given. 

Melbourne's plight this season, which resulted in coach Mark Neeld being sacked on Monday, has seen the club apply for the draft concession along with a range of other financial measures from the AFL.  

List management was discussed when Melbourne chief executive Peter Jackson met the commission last Friday, and League chief Andrew Demetriou told Jackson later that night the club would get a full response to its proposal in three to four weeks. 

The previous system of priority picks was scrapped in February last year. 

But since that change, the commission has had the discretionary powers to award a priority pick in "exceptional circumstances."

That discretion means a range of priority pick options could be explored for the Demons. 

In the past, the priority pick has been viewed automatically as the first pick in the draft, but the commission could also award picks at other stages of the draft, like mid-first round, end of first round or a combination of picks across later rounds. 

There is also the option of giving a pick and attaching a caveat to it, whereby the Demons could be forced to trade it, like Greater Western Sydney's mini-draft selections. 

Rival clubs surveyed by AFL.com.au in April opposed the Demons being awarded a compensation pick, saying they didn't deserve the extra concession.

The Demons were beneficiaries of the previous priority pick system, awarded a pick at the end of the first round of the 2008 NAB AFL Draft (pick No.17, Sam Blease) for winning less than five games.

When they again won less than five games the following season, they were handed a priority pick before the first round of the 2009 draft, which was used on No.1 pick Tom Scully. 

It gave Melbourne the first two picks that year (No.2 was used on Jack Trengove) but came back to haunt it, when the club was this year fined $500,000 for acting in a way prejudicial to the interests of the game that season.  

The AFL also banned then-coach Dean Bailey and former football operations manager Chris Connolly for the club's performance in 2009.