West Australian great Derek Kickett joins push for AFL draft age to be lifted

West Australian

27-05-2025

West Australian great Derek Kickett has backed a push by the State's peak football body to lift the minimum AFL draft age.
Kickett, who made his WAFL debut for West Perth at 21 and played his first VFL game for North Melbourne at 26, advocates lifting the current age to '20' or even '22-23'.
As revealed by The West Australian last week,
WA Football has contacted the league to lift the draft age by 12 months
to provide prospects with a clean run at their last year at school, get a head start on alternative career pathways and develop their life and football skills before joining an elite program.
'WA Football is not a recreation sport like when I played. Now football is a business, so if you muck up in your workplace you get the sack,' Kickett told Emma Garlett on The West Australian's YouTube channel, Paint it Blak.
'In my day it was hard, but getting into the AFL now, it's even harder and it's a challenge because you have got social media everywhere.
'Football players can't hide. Everyone has got a camera. They have to be on their best behaviour.
'It's challenging. The kids get drafted now, and I say kids because they are 18 years of age.
'If it was my child, I'd say don't draft the kids until they are about 20, 22,23.
'But they draft them at 18 … and they are on big bucks and they are under a lot of pressure to perform and stay in the good books.'
Kickett went on to play 259 games and kick 419 goals in a career that spanned 14 seasons across seven WAFL, SANFL and VFL-AFL clubs.
The West revealed WA Football's repeated approaches to the AFL had been met with resistance over fears they would lose the skilled athletes to other sports.
West Coast legend Glen Jakovich, who played his first AFL game with the Eagles at 18 and was 17 when he made his State of Origin debut, told The West Australian social media pressures and expectations meant the environment was different to when he was breaking into the elite competition.
'The young players coming through now you can see they need more personal development not only in their football but their life,' Jakovich told The West Australian.
'They're going straight into a high-octane, highly stressful environment playing professional football and the reality is most of these guys have got minimal life skills.
'I don't think they're mentally attuned to the community expectations.
'They haven't got a job yet, they haven't lived a life and I've always been an advocate that these guys need to get some life skills.'
Jakovich has worked as a development coach in the AFL's elite academy program and said looking back the 'kids were in no way ready mentally for what they were about to get into'.
Jakovich was a WAFL regular at age 16, had played his 50th game by 18 and at 19 had won two premierships with the West Coast Eagles. He retired mid-season in 2004 as the then Eagles games record holder with 276, won four John Worsfold medals and is an AFL Hall of Fame member.
WA Football would not provide an official comment, but is believed to also be concerned over the disruption to schooling, the impact of shifting young men and women across the country and the growing risk of mental health challenges, particularly for youth.
It is also understood WA Football believes pushing the draft year back by 12 months would decrease the selection risks of recruiting players who never play an AFL game.
Players are eligible to be drafted if they turn 18 by December 31 in the same year.
Fremantle legend David Mundy said last year the draft age should be lifted from 18 to 21 to help players with their life after football.
'I'm firm in the belief that the draft age should be raised - and raised as significantly as to 21 through a staged process over multiple years,' Mundy told 6PR.
'I feel like if you raise the draft age by that much, that's significantly, then young men leaving high school at 17 or 18 years of age can go in and find a trade, do their trade apprenticeship over the three years, enter university, get TAFE degrees - continue their education.
'If you get work experience, it can almost set their life direction outside of sport, whilst still developing and playing football they want to play, wherever they want to play it.
'But they get that three years of physical development, of career development and then they enter into the AFL system.'