WEST Coast, North Melbourne and Hawthorn are mired at the bottom of the ladder this year, the view to the top so far into the distance it must be difficult to see. Other clubs, like Essendon, are further down the road, but the kids are still in the backseat asking, 'Are we there yet?'

There's a way to quicken up the process.

'Pick purchasing' is a method yet to be unlocked that would fully fast-track rebuilds.

There are clubs keen for the mechanism to be added to the list management landscape, which would allow those at the bottom to rise quicker and those at the top attempt to contend for longer.

AFL.com.au first raised 'pick purchasing', a concept that would allow one club to outright buy a draft pick off another by trading their salary cap space, as the next evolution of trading in 2021, with last year seeing further steps towards it in a 'salary dump'-heavy exchange period.

Jack Bowes' move to Geelong, accompanied by Gold Coast's pick No.7, was as close as the game has come to pick purchasing, but it is not unusual for other clubs to pay part of players' contracts: Brodie Grundy (Collingwood), Lachie Hunter (Western Bulldogs) and Hawthorn pair Jaeger O'Meara and Tom Mitchell are all having parts of their salary this year – and some into the future – paid for by their old clubs.

But the pure transaction of clubs using their salary cap space to buy picks is the next evolution, with clubs confident the move would allow struggling teams to better close the gap between the best and the battlers.

Clubs have historically traded by using three assets – players, picks and points – but pay can be added to the group as the considerable chip in list managers' hands. Having salary cap space is the biggest currency of all.

Here's how pick purchasing would work.

North Melbourne, Essendon and Hawthorn are the three most cashed-up clubs this year but history suggests they will struggle to attract top-end free agents by virtue of their ladder positions. In the past decade, only three restricted free agents (generally the best available) have left a club to join a side that was bottom-six that year - George Hewett at Carlton, Brandon Ellis at Gold Coast and Matthew Leuenberger at Essendon.

However, the free agency system that was designed to help struggling clubs but instead has come to benefit the best can be flipped by the capacity to trade salary cap space for picks.

Hawthorn, keen to speed up its rebuild, could offer Collingwood $500,000 for its first-round draft pick this year. The Pies, knowing they are in the premiership window, might prefer the extra money in their cap to keep their list together and retain a gun player rather than be squeezed out through salary cap issues.

It is a move that meets both clubs' priorities.

Or if the Bombers got a gun player to join them and needed to give up two first-round picks in a trade, they could use one of their own and then purchase a pick from another club using their salary cap space to on-trade it and get a deal done.

Clubs first raised the idea with the AFL during the 2021 trade period, when they asked if they could do it but were told no. However, the focus on cap space has only built since then as a trading tool. The Bowes move sped things along, too.

The concern would be that it could maintain teams' time at the top, but the trade-off to that is that clubs would be losing quality picks to do it. That cycle – unless you're Geelong, the ultimate outlier – doesn't last forever. It is a risk for those clubs who do chase the glory at expense of youth, too, as shown by Hawthorn's trade attempts to extend its flag era past 2015.

There would also be mechanisms attached to the rule to ensure teams can't go overboard, such as limitations on how much money a club can pay outside the salary cap for selling a draft pick and restrictions on how many players per club each year can be a part of such a deal. The payments could also be just for a single season, while there could be a capacity to bank the money that comes as part of a pick purchase. This would be similar to the current mechanism that allows clubs who don't pay their full salary cap amount to bank the extra, which can then be used to pay up to 105 per cent of the cap in future years.

Teams at the bottom of the ladder will always find it difficult to attract top-range players through trades and free agency, meaning that have to rely on the draft as their main driver up the ladder. But by letting them use their money on pick purchasing, the AFL would give these clubs an extra gear.