Date 24, 27 November 2015 Broadcast Fox Footy | Country Australia | |
 | ||
Time 5:30 pm ACDT (24 November)
11:00 am AEDT (27 November) Location Adelaide Convention Centre,
Adelaide, South Australia Sponsored by National Australia Bank | ||
The 2015 Australian Football League draft consisted of the various periods where the 18 clubs in the Australian Football League (AFL) can trade and recruit players following the completion of the 2015 AFL season. Additions to each club's playing list are not allowed at any other time during the year.
Contents
- Free agency
- Trades
- 2015 national draft
- Rookie elevations
- 2016 rookie draft
- Player breakdown
- Essendon top up signings
- References
The key dates for the trading and drafting periods were:
Additionally, following the guilty verdicts handed down to 34 past and present Essendon players in January 2016 for doping violations, Essendon was given the opportunity to recruit top-up players between January and March 2016.
Free agency
The initial list of free agents, published in March 2015, consisted of 74 unrestricted and restricted free agents, however, 35 of those players re-signed and 15 retired during or after the home-and-away season.
Trades
For the first time, clubs were allowed to trade future selections from the next year's draft as well as the current draft. Geelong became the first AFL club to trade a future draft pick on 14 October 2015 when they traded their 2016 first round pick to Carlton for Lachie Henderson.
2015 national draft
The 2015 AFL national draft was held on 24 November 2015 at the Adelaide Convention Centre. For the first time, live bidding occurred during the draft for selections made under the father–son rule and from the northern state's development academies, whereby each draft selection is allocated a points value. Clubs nominating a player were forced to use their existing draft selections to match the points value of the pick used by the club bidding for the player.
Final draft orderRookie elevations
Clubs were able to promote any player who was listed on their rookie list in 2015 to their 2016 primary playing list prior to the draft. In total, 14 players were promoted.
2016 rookie draft
The 2016 AFL rookie draft was held on 27 November 2015. The official rookie draft order was released on 26 November and each club, with the exception of Greater Western Sydney who are still operating with an expanded list, can have between four and six players on their rookie list, as long as they have a maximum of 44 players on their combined primary and rookie lists.
The pre-season draft was not held as all eligible clubs informed the AFL they would not be participating.
Player breakdown
A total of 134 players were drafted across the national and rookie drafts. The following is a breakdown of players drafted by position and the league they were drafted from:
The TAC Cup was the league with the highest number of players drafted, with forty-five in total. The Dandenong Stingrays in the TAC Cup had the most players drafted out of any team with seven players.
Essendon top-up signings
On 12 January 2016, thirty-four past and present Essendon Football Club players – twelve of whom were still on the Essendon list – were suspended until November 2016 after being found guilty of being injected with the banned substance thymosin beta-4 during the 2012 season, significantly compromising Essendon's playing list for 2016. The club received permission to augment its list by recruiting up to ten top-up players from lower levels on contracts which would last until 31 October 2016. The club was limited to players who had been on an AFL list in either 2014 or 2015, with no more than one player to be taken from any state-level club; or, it could recruit any VFL-listed player from its own reserves team without restriction.