The AFL has moved to quell concerns from clubs likely to lose key players to the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney franchises by improving their draft compensation.

While the new deal still won't please everyone, it is a major concession from the AFL which had heard the jungle drums beating in the distance and wanted to defuse a showdown with aggrieved clubs.

Under the original rules, Geelong, for example, would have received only pick No.26 in the 2010 national draft (at the start of the second round) for Gary Ablett - should Ablett, in fact, have decided to leave. The revamped package is now far more equitable.

Now the Cats will receive two first-round picks if they lose a player of Ablett's calibre - a ‘top echelon' or ‘band one' player under the AFL's new five-band formula. And the second of those picks would be a mid-round pick, taken after the eight teams who missed the finals have had their selections.

But not all players recruited by the Gold Coast would attract such generous concessions. Younger, inexperienced players picked up by the new franchises might be regarded as being in the band-five category and be lost to clubs for far less in the way of compensation.

Under the revised formula announced by the AFL today, the league will now calculate the worth of a player on their future salary and also age, rather than on what they had been paid beforehand.

An independent panel, which will include Kevin Sheehan, the league talent manager, and game analyst Andrew McKay, will act as arbiter and have the final call on compensation.

One hopes they've kept their diaries free in the off-season, because it is easy to imagine them having to arbitrate time and time again over what constitutes a fair deal. Clubs will surely claim they're losing an elite player, while the league might rate that same player as being of band-two or -three quality.

If - to choose a player at random - Jarrod Harbrow was to accept an offer from Gold Coast, the Western Bulldogs would surely argue that he's pivotal to their long-term plans and a band-one player. The league might say to the Dogs, hang on, your band-one players are Adam Cooney, Brian Lake and Shaun Higgins; Harbow is no better than band-two. An impasse ensues; Messrs Sheehan and McKay are then called in to sort out the mess.

AFL Operations Manager Adrian Anderson said the changes had been made to correct ‘‘anomalies'' in the previous rules.

He said there were concerns expressed by the existing clubs about compensation for the loss of a young, up-and-coming player (such as Richmond's Dustin Martin, who has reportedly already attracted the interest of GWS) and marquee players, such as Ablett, for just one first-round pick. (The photograph, incidentally, is of a poster published by the Gold Coast Bulletin earlier this year.)

Clubs, headed by Geelong, have been lobbying against the initital system. With their key playmaker out of contract, and weighing up whether to join his brother Nathan on the Gold Coast next season, the Cats had good reason to protest.

In announcing the changes today, AFL legal affairs general manager Andrew Dillon said the compensation formulas were reviewed after concerns were lodged by a number of clubs.

The list development working group, which includes representatives from the League and clubs, met in April and May to discuss possible alterations. The recommended changes were then approved by the AFL Commission at its meeting in Perth on Monday.

"It was the working group's view ... there should be extra compensation for a club that loses a top echelon player," Dillon said.

"The compensation is designed to reflect the relative values of various players ... and to reflect the upside of younger players."But it is not designed to fully compensate a club for the loss of a player as the working group understands that all clubs will have to make sacrifices in the list establishment for the expansion teams."

Both new teams are allowed to recruit an uncontracted player from each of the existing 16 clubs.

The AFL statement went on to say that clubs that lost uncontracted players to the Gold Coast or Greater Western Sydney would be allowed to use their compensation draft selection at any of the next five national drafts.