Carlton, in effect, would have an incentive to fold the tent and give up a key player, if they’d gain a premium from a rival club that saw itself as one chess piece short of the flag. They’d have ended the season with three first-rounders, and two picks inside six, plus a player who suited their needs. If necessary, they could trade those picks for a gun player in October.

Melbourne’s rivals, especially Collingwood and the Lions, would have faced a Demon attack featuring McKay and Kysaiah Pickett at his feet.

In this fantasy, the Blues would also stump up most of McKay’s wage for 2023 – as the AFL allows in October trades (see Brodie Grundy, Adam Treloar and others); in effect, the Blues would be buying a better draft hand and handing the Demons pole position for the 2023 premiership.

We could apply the same make-believe world to GWS and Brisbane or Collingwood.

The clubs are pondering the question of a mid-season trading system, which is considered a serious chance for 2025, but is all but ruled out for this year. The players have agreed to mid-year trading, subject to details.

A view has taken hold, in some quarters, that mid-season trading will be exciting, that more movement of players is an inherent good and that, as with the NBA, NFL, baseball and European soccer, such mechanisms will enhance the competition.

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The AFL has asked clubs for feedback on player movement; there is measured support for mid-season trading from several clubs, although one has already suggested that mid-year trades should be restricted to lowly paid or minimum wage players, that it should be about player opportunity, rather than handing leverage to top teams and players.

This column, which has often backed rule changes – such as the six-six-six and kick-in and man-on-mark changes that improved the spectacle – is concerned about the unintended consequences of mid-season trading.

Here are a few blatant wrinkles in a liberal mid-year trading system that emulates overseas sports:

1. Assuming there’s little restriction on who you can trade, clubs down the ladder, e.g. Carlton last year, have greater incentive to give up on the season and effectively tank. This flies in the face of the equalisation that has made the AFL more appealing.
2. The teams higher on the ladder would enhance their position if they can a) acquire a key player that redresses immediate need and b) can get the vendor to pay a portion of that season’s contract.
3. Integrity. The fixture will always be compromised, but is it right to cop, say, Richmond with Tom Lynch in round six – and then your top eight/four rival gets the Tigers without him in round 18? Not because he’s injured/suspended, but since he’s playing for Collingwood or Sydney by then?
4. Players and their agents could ruthlessly exploit a mid-year trade threat: “I want to go to Geelong and get there now (Cats are thereabouts). Or sign me on a $6 million deal now.” Predatory clubs will get in the ear of players to push for an immediate trade.
5. Geographic disadvantage. Victorian clubs can gain players from nine teams in the same state. Is a gun player, with kids, willing up uproot his life and move to Queensland or Adelaide?

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Players already favour top-six sides when weighing up trades. If mid-year trades aren’t heavily restricted, this trend will be exacerbated.

Many within the media will favour mid-season trading, since it will create more content for fans who devour every skerrick of information about even the most minor players and deals. It will be a boon to the player movement media industrial complex and will continue the code’s continued embrace of American sporting culture and practices.

But league CEO Andrew Dillon and the commission must remember that Australian rules football has an entirely different culture – it grew out of communities, not professional sport per se – and that fans also need to have a group of one-club players and a stable relationship with their best and more beloved players.

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