Deal Maker: The Secret World of AFL Recruiting and Trading by Scott Clayton
- Type Non-Fiction
- Vendor Scott Clayton, Peter Ryan
- Pages
- Release year 2026
- Publisher
Scott Clayton has spent forty years in the AFL, more than thirty of them as a recruiting manager. Deal Maker, written with journalist Peter Ryan, takes you behind the trade table and into the draft room, where club lists are quietly built, broken and rebuilt.
Clayton helped put together the Brisbane sides that went on to win premierships, built the Gold Coast Suns list from nothing, and pulled off the coup that brought Gary Ablett from Geelong to the Suns. He has recruited for the Western Bulldogs, West Coast and North Melbourne as well, so he has seen how the deals really get done.
This is the trade period and the draft from the inside: the phone calls, the bluffs, the fallouts, and what it actually takes to spot a player worth chasing.
Australian sport writing for AFL supporters, and a good one for Father's Day.