Sure is. There were plenty of players off contract for the 2023 season for them to fill a team, not all of them stars mind you but so what?
One thing i hated about the AFL expansion was the extra help they gave GWS Giants with salary cap concessions and extra priority draft picks, they ended up making the grand final a few years after their entry, but did they get there on a level playing field? No.
Hard to be successful if you don't have any stars! Need a new team to have some prospect of finding
some wins in early years and not just being drilled into the ground.
Hard for new fans to get behind a team with no stars too.
GWS also didn't have the 'level playing field' of existing for decades beforehand.
I don't mind The getting a little bit of help to at least try and come in as not a
clear spoon contender.
I don't think the chance to negotiate for 2024 5 months early is a huge advantage. Players current team can still negotiate and they can also still hold out until November. And if managers think it's in their best interest they will leak anything to other clubs anyway. If they mention to another club what offers they are looking at the another club says ' oh shame we can't negotiate yet, we'd certainly offer more than that' then it makes no difference anyway.
Just like the players who were off contact for next year still by the time they were admitted into comp there is absolutely no guarantee those players will sign with The.
Only so much resources they can dump into those 2024 players too, still need to sign a full team and min spend on cap for 2023. Hard to do that and still leave a manageable cap position to bring in more than 1 or 2 stars the next year (without a
heap of 1 year contracts)