The AFL is turning back the clock up to five years, reinstating the conditions behind clubs bettering their draft positioning with stacked-up Next Generation Academy Indigenous recruits.

Club chief executives have been willing to accept an in-principle agreement with the AFL administration to bring similar guidelines back to the draft to lift academy drafting concessions.

The AFL commission will still need to approve the proposed rule change in August before its implemented in this year's AFL draft.

It comes after criticism of how Jamarra Ugle-Hagan ended up with the seventh-placed Western Bulldogs.

The athletic tall was in the club's Next Generation Academy's zone in South-West Victoria via the Oakleigh Chargers, however rival clubs were wild the Bulldogs were able to gain Ugle-Hagan from their accumulated first selections of 29, 33, 41, 42, 52 and 54 through draft points to the No.1 draft pick after matching Adelaide's expected bid on the Djap Wurrung Gunditjmara and Noongar prospect with the draft's first call.

The Bulldogs was forced to use the maximum 3000 points their original draft hand of 14, 40, 53 and 89 draft picks after cleverly scrambling the extra combined picks and extra points gathered at the earlier trade period in anticipation of the necessary move to retain the club's top academy graduate.

The move was the justification for many clubs whose academy zones were not filled with naturally talented Indigenous or multicultural players to block such pertinent claims on eligible academy players.

Some same club officials have reportedly admitted that alleviating the academy restrictions, clubs will also pay a much higher price to match an opposition bid than what the Western Bulldogs once did after Adelaide's move on draft day.

The AFL listened to advocates of other clubs after over the following two years to Ugle-Hagan's pick pushed clubs' academy access out to assist with its own competitive balance.

Under the existing 2024 rules that was changed, clubs did not have priority access to their academy graduates unless they were available after pick 40.

There were talks earlier this year to lower the cap back to down to just the top 20 – essentially in the opening-round selection of picks – that was initially seen as a fair compromise.

However, once clubs accepted the Ugle-Hagan rule, as it has often been referred to since 2020, as a reward for clubs who had spent up to five years developing players since they'd turned 14, clubs will have a harder path to match bids.

An AFL inquiry three years ago did recognise a rorting of the academy player system.

Most Aboriginal players from Victoria like Ugle-Hagan and Marcus Windhager, who St Kilda secured in the 2021 draft outside of the first 20 picks but before the move to a top-40 cap, were already in a polished system before they are drawn into a geography-base academy.

Multicultural players, whose parents grew up outside of Australia, have similar but different circumstances to top First Nations' prospects that already have a cultural appetite for Australian rules football.

The rule that saved Windhager cost Melbourne naming Mac Andrew, who was in the zoning area of the Demons, in the draft when Gold Coast nabbed the son of Sudanese parents with the No.5 selection without opposition to a Dees' bid.

Clubs have previously told the AFL, who were concerned over a distinct decline in the number of Indigenous players in the draft over recent years that academy draft rules and AFL development programs were not giving them an incentive to invest in their regions and develop players should they end up at other clubs.