Sydney Swans football manager Tom Harley says the game's northern clubs will need to reassess their investment into academies if their incentives are watered down in a revised bidding system soon to be revealed by the AFL.
After receiving formal feedback from clubs, the League is close to unveiling its finalised system to ensure clubs pay fair value for academy and father-son players.
A proposed system, which allocates a value to each draft pick and offers discounts to clubs selecting a father-son or academy player, has been met with some opposition since it was sent to clubs in January.
Harley said future investment in the academies by the Swans as well as GWS, the Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast, hinged on receiving adequate discounts for the players they help develop.
"We're significant investors in our academy and if the new proposal gets up from the AFL, our board and the three other northern market boards will have to think long and hard about the level of investment they put into the academies," Harley told AFL.com.au's First Bounce.
"We'll obviously play by the rules, but we do think the incentives need to be there to continue.
"Our understanding is that points system will come in, it's just a matter of what level of discount is apportioned to the academy and father-son players.
"We spent a bit of time putting together a fairly consolidated response to that, which was due in February."
Under the proposed system, academy nominations would receive a 25 per cent discount and father-son nominations would receive a 15 per cent discount on the value of the selection they are taken at.
Harley said the final model needed to reward northern clubs, whose academies were "absolutely necessary for the long-term growth of the game".
"What's been lost in this whole debate is it's all centred on the top-end talent," he said.
"We appreciate we got Isaac Heeney in the first round of the draft last year and Callum Mills is a good young player coming through.
"But we did some research into it and since 2000 [with] 1200 picks in the draft, only 11 players have come out of what is a Sydney Swans academy zone.
"Three of those have gone on to play 100 games and only two have been first round picks, so there hasn't been this glut of talent that people are talking about."
