Australian Football League side Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley "has added his voice to the condemnation of free agency" in the AFL, and "is particularly scornful of a mooted plan for players to be able to covertly sign with rival clubs during a season," according to Jesse Hogan of THE AGE. Buckley said that he disliked the now-accepted National Rugby League practice of players "signing for rival clubs midway through a season, but argued the mooted plan for the AFL would be even worse." Buckley said on Wednesday, "It just sounds wrong. There's probably only one thing worse than that [NRL practice], and that is someone already knowing they're going elsewhere and not being honest and open about it. So I'd think the [proposed] system ... is even worse than the NRL one." Buckley argued that "any in-season negotiations should go no further than clubs informally approaching the managers of rival clubs' players, with formal negotiations that involve the player's consent to be left until the conclusion of that player's season" (THE AGE, 7/30). In Melbourne, Matt Murnane wrote the AFL Players Association has expressed "extreme concern" about the league’s plan to remove the second bye from next year’s fixture. The AFL "looks certain to reduce the number of byes in 2015 in order to accommodate a late start to the season due to cricket’s World Cup." It remains unclear whether the AFL will "reinstate two byes into the fixture" beyond '15, however it is understood "the league is open to the idea of eliminating the second bye altogether" (THE AGE, 7/30).
