It was during a seminar at Surfers Paradise, which took place in 1978, that the idea of players being recruited via a draft was first raised by administrators of the old Victorian Football League.
A player draft, along with a salary cap, was mentioned again in 1984 when Carlton powerbrokers John Elliott and Ian Collins put together a proposal for a breakaway national league.
However, it wasn't until a year later that the idea really took hold.
This time the push came from current Geelong board member Colin Carter, who recommended a national draft in his seminal report VFL Football: Establishing the Basis for Future Success.
The report had been initiated by the newly-formed VFL commission.
"You have to remember the circumstances of the time, in that half the clubs were broke and attendances had been declining," explains Carter, who later served on the AFL commission between 1993 and 2008.
Carter believed the VFL's biggest problem was that it had become a very uneven competition. In the 18 seasons from 1967 to 1984, only five clubs - Carlton, Richmond, North Melbourne, Hawthorn and Essendon - had won premierships.
"Seven clubs were basically making up the numbers," Carter says.
"So we got into questioning the assumption about failing clubs equalling bad management. That led us into the pursuit of finding other ways to run a competition and that led us to the draft."
Player drafts and salary caps had already been used in American sports - football and basketball in particular - for a number of years.
"We spent a lot of time looking at overseas competitions because we were interested in finding out whether there were any that were both financially stable and even on the field," says Carter.
"In that search you couldn't help but look at the National Football League in the US.
"It didn't take long to realise that the NFL's equalisation strategies like the draft, the salary cap and the sharing of the television contract evenly across all clubs was very effective.
"Those three things became the platform on which we could see that a competition could be run that was even and financially much more stable."
The first VFL draft was held in late 1986, with the Brisbane Bears selecting Port Adelaide defender Martin Leslie with the first pick.
In the 25 years since then, the draft meeting has evolved into an event.
This year it will be telecast around the nation on Fox Sports, while around 100 journalists will travel to the Gold Coast to cover the selections as they happen.
"For a long time, maybe 10 years, I felt it was a constant battle to re-educate new leaders of the clubs as to why the equalisation strategies were important," Carter says.
"But I think that battle has largely been won now. Nobody seriously questions whether the draft was a good idea."
The fact every AFL club has played in at least one preliminary final during the past 11 seasons is evidence the equalisation of the competition has worked.
"There were one or two decisions that were the most important in the history of the game," Carter says.
"One of them was the equalisation strategies, which changed the nature of the competition.
"That and the ground rationalisation strategies are behind a lot of the increases in attendances we've had, which have been wonderful."
