It has been months since the conclusion of the 2025 season, and with the calendar having ticked around to 2026, the questions have started coming through, louder and more frequently - what’s the draft order? Why don’t we have the draft order? Why weren’t we told as soon as the 2025 season ended? What is Brenton hiding??

Fair questions, all of them. And so now, with the draft date set as Saturday February 28th, the time has come to give you answers.

Draft order decider - a refresher

As you should remember, last year each Injustice League member selected a random AFL Select footy cards pack, and the players in that pack determined held their fate for the 2026 draft. The collective SuperCoach scores of each players pack throughout the year would be ranked, and the totals would determine not the draft order itself, but instead the order in which each Injustice member would CHOOSE their pick. The IJL member with the highest total score would have the first pick of the draft, being able to choose any number from 1 to 16. The person with the WORST pick? They wouldn’t get to choose at all, being given whatever is left at the end. Of course, there’s a good chance people just choose 1 to 16 in that order, but you never know.

So what’s next?

No, you’re not about to find out what the draft pick selection order is. Here’s a complete step by step guide to what’s about to happen instead.

1. The person with the first pick in the draft order selection is, at some point soon, going to be messaged privately and asked to select their first draft pick number from 1 to 16.
2. Once that person has chosen, the person with the next pick is then going to messaged privately and told which picks remain and be asked to choose one.
3. This will continue until the first 15 picks have been chosen. This means each person will know how many picks have been chosen before them, but they will not know who chose these picks.
4. The exception is the person with the LAST pick. They will not know if all picks have been chosen, or what pick is remaining for them until TEN MINUTES before the draft starts. They will likely have a pretty good idea as the time ticks down, but they won’t know for sure if it’s just taking a while to get through the list, or if they are indeed last. And yes, this does give them a disadvantage. Should have picked a better pack.

Should you keep your draft pick secret?

There are no rules for what you must do after you’ve selected your draft pick. You can go and shout it to the world if you wish. However it is strongly recommended that you do not share this information. Knowledge is power, and you don’t want to be giving out information when other people aren’t. Besides, you probably want those waiting for their selection to have no idea where in the order they are, so keeping quiet about even having made your selection is probably going to unsettle your rivals and give you the mental upper hand.

Draft pick trading

As with all previous seasons, you are allowed to trade your draft picks. HOWEVER there is a pretty big caveat to draft pick trading this year. And that is, there is no way to fully confirm what draft pick another person has until the draft starts. And that’s why this is a very important stipulation: if a deal is struck between 2 players to trade their draft picks, I will trade their draft picks REGARDLESS of what draft picks the players have/tell each other they have. If Mark tells Will that he has pick 1 (just to choose two people at random) and offers to trade Will for his pick 10, and after the trade goes through it turns out Mark actually had pick 16 - Mark now has pick 10 and Will has pick 16.

Trade picks at your own risk. And if you want to lie through your teeth in order to attempt to get a better one, now is the time. I can hear Mark hyperventilating from here.

Note: Due to both myself (Shay) and Brenton knowing the draft selection order (although Brenton won’t know the draft order itself), both Brenton and myself are excluded from all draft pick trading and cannot trade our draft picks at all.