AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou says the league will not be pressured into a decision on free agency, despite the threat of legal action.

Player agent Ricky Nixon said players under his management had their careers ended by the AFL's "antiquated" player movement rules in the past and he intended to mount a challenge in the future if they were not changed.

Nixon told The Australian newspaper he had spoken to law firms who were willing to act on behalf of a player, if one wanted to test the waters on the issue.

AFL Players' Association chief executive Brendon Gale also said he had warned the league that if free agency was not introduced soon, the matter could be decided in the courts.

But Demetriou said while discussions on the issue were continuing with the AFLPA, the league would not be forced into a move.

"I don't think player agents, for what it's worth, do dictate how the competition is run, certainly the last time I checked," Demetriou told reporters.

"And, you know, they are a beneficiary out of the competition.

"We work pretty closely with the players' association and we're on the same page about growing the game.

"They understand why we've got the rules in place that we've got, they share in the upside.

"No doubt there'll be some dialogue going forward, about what may or may not happen in the future."

Earlier, Gale said the association and the AFL had been in discussions about the concept for 12 months, but it was time for action.

"The pressure will come, as I've said to the AFL, and it won't necessarily come from us," Gale told Melbourne radio station SEN.

"My concern is ultimately there might be a particularly litigious player or agent who feels so aggrieved or so limited in their ability to go and ply his professional trade at another club that they'll get up and take action.

"I guess the AFL and the players' association sitting down together trying to work through it, it might actually be taken out of our hands."

Gale said the AFLPA would prefer to negotiate an agreement with the AFL rather than have a player go down the legal path.

"We're not zealots, we're reasonable people and I would like to think that reasonable people sitting around a table having regard to the interests of all the stakeholders could come up with a reasonable solution," he said.

Gale said under the AFLPA's proposal, an uncontracted player who had been at a club for five or six years would have the right to negotiate a deal directly with a rival club.

But, the player's current club could keep them by matching that deal.

However, if a player had been at a club for a longer period, his original club would not have the automatic right to match the deal.

Gale said the association had no interest in undermining the trade and draft system, or of creating an NRL-type situation where a player could be playing for one club, while having a contract with another club for the following season.

An AFL spokesman said the league was in regular and ongoing discussion with the AFLPA, and did not have a position "set in stone".

He said there had been changes to trading rules in the past two years which had freed up player movement, reversing a previous decline in the number of trades.

The league were confident their rules would stand up legally.

"We think our rules have stood up for more than two decades and our rules are a key reason why the competition is so even and why every club has reached at least a preliminary final over the past decade," the spokesman said.

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