So everybody is complaining because father/son selections have advantaged Collingwood.

Oooh – Josh and Nick Daicos, as well as Darcy Moore.

How important were they to Collingwood’s 2023 premiership campaign? Darcy Moore was the inspirational captain.

Nick Daicos would’ve won the Brownlow if he didn’t miss six games with injury.

Josh Daicos won Collingwood’s Best and Fairest -and just in case you missed it, he did it in a premiership year.

Why is this such a big issue now?

Where was the complaint, for example, when Geelong netted Matthew Scarlett with pick 41, and Gary Ablett Jr with pick 40 under the father/son rule?

How about the Bulldogs with Sam Darcy?

Plenty of other clubs have benefitted from father/son selections, but is it an issue now because Collingwood’s profited?

Josh Daicos was taken with pick 57 in the 2016 national draft – Collingwood’s last pick. Other clubs had 56 opportunities to try to take him. They didn’t. But now is it an issue because he’s developed into a good player?

So it was fine to let Collingwood draft him when no other club thought he was worth it? How’s that for a double standard?

Collingwood had to accumulate the points to take Nick Daicos at pick 4. North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs had the option to bid on Nick and force Collingwood to spend more, but they didn’t. GWS did.

Now obviously, no other club was actually going to land him because Collingwood had stockpiled enough points to match a bid.

But, interestingly, Collingwood preplanned for Nick Daicos a season earlier when it traded away their future first round. If they’d kept it, they would’ve had pick 2.

Some may consider that neither here nor there, but what I don’t see anybody doing is lamenting that Collingwood threw away such a high first-rounder in hopes of building their draft cache, knowing they could work within the AFL system to stockpile points.

As an aside, the Bulldogs instead took Sam Darcy with pick 2 in the same draft. Has anybody heard a complaint about that?

Let’s not forget Bulldogs finished fifth and ended up with pick 2. Collingwood ended seventeenth and ended up with pick 4. Where exactly is the greater disparity?

To claim Darcy Moore, Collingwood had to use their first-rounder, pick 9, in the 2014 national draft to match the Bulldogs bid.

But the issue is, of course, Collingwood’s had successes. Among notable others have been Heath Shaw and Travis Cloke.

However, what about Collingwood’s misses? Since 2000, there’s been Brayden Shaw (pick 48), Jaxson Barham (pick 61), Callum Brown (pick 35, matching a bid from North Melbourne), Tyler Brown (pick 50), Will Kelly (pick 29), Cameron Cloke (pick 43), and Jason Cloke (pick 19)? They also decided not to draft James Stewart and Jake Kelly.

Why aren’t they highlighted?

Because they aren’t freak talents? Let’s not bring any balance to this argument. Why bother when it’s much more productive to shout at clouds?

Collingwood lucked out with Nick Daicos being the talent he is, even though the masses of opposition fans on X (formerly known as Twitter) will tell you he’s overrated – and, as a friend pointed out, yet will bemoan the unfairness of the father/son rule that netted him.

But the father/son rule offers some romanticism of continuity at a football club, a way to honour a lineage through generations at a football club.

Going back to Sam Darcy, his father Luke played 226 games for the Dogs between 1994 – 2007, and his father (Sam’s grandfather) David played 133 games between 1963 – 1966 and 1968 – 1971.

Doesn’t that have greater prestige than if they’d all played at different clubs?

The AFL has progressively increased the difficulty – and as a byproduct of that, the cost – in securing father/sons.

If they’re to eliminate them as an option because they’re considered unfair advantages, then to be fair anything considered compromised, such as academy picks, points, priority picks, a grotesquely inexplicable compensation system – should be scrapped and every draft prospect should be thrown into a pool where no one club has any stake.

Of course that won’t happen.

Of all the quirks in the AFL’s list management mechanisms, at least the father/son has historical value.