Sometimes in AFL football you need a helping hand. It's a principle which has underpinned the entire draft system, now close to four decades old, and broadly speaking, it's worked well.
Occasionally, though, some extra draft assistance has been required via priority picks for the likes of North Melbourne, a small club which its whole history has battled the handicaps of limited resources and support base. Or Gold Coast, attempting to become a viable organisation in previously barren football territory.
But what about when a football giant falls on hard times of its own making?
Well, we're about to find out via the example of West Coast, around whom the lobbying for priority draft picks is ramping up already.
It's an interesting debate. And I'd argue strongly that what should happen this year beyond the Eagles getting another first pick in the national draft for another seemingly inevitable wooden spoon is ... absolutely nothing.
While, broadly speaking, I'm a fan of equalisation in football, there also has to be some level of accountability for consistently bad decision-making, and particularly for a club which is probably less entitled to lump itself in with the "have nots" of the competition than any other.
Claiming "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" just doesn't cut it here. In fact, West Coast in terms of its genetic football advantages and backing is barely even the same species as the likes of the Kangaroos and Suns.
West Coast for so long had an entire football-mad state behind it. It's had endless streams of fawning sponsors, patrons and well-heeled backers. A largely compliant and extremely supportive media. Members scrambling over each other to get a ticket.
And there's a fair argument those advantages have over decades manifested in an arrogance which has helped drive them to the hapless state in which they now find themselves.
The Eagles have been not just a big fish but a whale in a small pond almost since their inception in the late 1980s. We saw that tendency to march to their own drum and refuse to take heed of warnings take an awful human toll 20 or so years ago. Maybe this current dire state of affairs on the field is just another version of the same affliction.
And that is a value judgement the AFL is going to need to make if West Coast seeks priority draft picks at the end of what is looming as another disastrous football season.
The nebulous "formula" established for such decisions once the AFL made its draft priority picks discretionary in 2012 includes such considerations as recent premierships, finals appearances and injury rates.
You'd have to question how rigorously the AFL is setting its standards required for help if it gives West Coast a tick on those particular criteria.
The Eagles won the 2018 premiership, just five-and-a-half years ago, and more recently than 13 of their 17 rivals. West Coast participated in finals the following two seasons, and finished with 10 wins, only a game outside the top eight, in 2021.
As for injuries, while the Eagles' casualty list has been the longest in the AFL for some time, how much of that has been bad luck and how much has been due to bad management?
This is a team, remember, of which former captain Luke Shuey, now retired, said only a bit over a year ago: "A lot of people externally were calling us 'unfit' last year -- and they probably weren't completely off the mark with that suggestion."
It was, and remains, a remarkable admission, certainly not one suggestive of a team and club doing everything in its power to rise back to the top. And one which surely goes some way to explaining the overflowing medical room.
And West Coast's list? After the Eagles scraped over the line against Collingwood to win the 2018 premiership, they effectively sold the farm to load up further with a genuine star in Geelong's Tim Kelly, and beyond that simply clung on way too long to too many favourites who aged quickly and became injury prone.
The now-retired likes of Shuey, Brad Sheppard and Nic Naitanui soaked up list and salary cap space while rarely playing. It's still happening with Elliot Yeo, Jeremy McGovern, Dom Sheed and Liam Ryan. Not enough potential replacements have shown enough. There's Harley Reid, Reuben Ginbey, then who?
But this is hardly a problem which was unavoidable had West Coast not got too comfortable with familiar faces who were getting the job done five years ago. The truth is, the Eagles, in list terms, rolled the dice and lost. Why should they be bailed out for that?
North Melbourne has battled institutionalised disadvantage its whole history. Gold Coast was a long-term investment in foreign turf which simply couldn't be abandoned after less than a decade.
West Coast remains a corporate powerhouse which on the field has been close to the most successful club of the AFL era, and has everything at its disposal to become so again. It's been poor for just over two years, in football terms a drop in the ocean. Rushing to its aid via special assistance already wouldn't just be premature, it would be a ridiculous overreaction.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.