ADELAIDE'S strategy to reposition itself in the draft order during the trade period paid off when it managed to snare the key defender it wanted with its first pick in the NAB AFL Draft on Thursday night.

The Crows used pick No.14 to select highly rated Victorian Jake Lever, after much consternation over whether the Crows should have swapped their No. 10 selection along with pick 47 for picks 14 and 35.

"We knew there was a big spread of equal talent, so therefore we knew we would be able to land some really good talent in that back end," list manager David Noble told AFL.com.au.

"We have a lot of confidence in our systems and our guys with our talent ID and we knew that a slide from 10 to 14 would not necessarily massively hurt us if it allowed us to bring a couple of other things forward as part of the overall strategy."

Noble said draft penalties imposed in 2012 for salary cap misdemeanours that saw the club out of the first two rounds of the 2012 and 2013 drafts meant the club had to be creative.

The trading of picks with Geelong allowed the club to choose Lever – who Noble said he would have taken at pick 10 if he held on to that selection – and small defender Harrison Wigg at No. 35, a player regarded as an excellent kick.

Noble said Adelaide also looked at the second round pick of 35 as more valuable because the three father-son and Academy selections immediately before it effectively made it pick No. 32.

"If we thought that there was a risk of losing a really top end talent at 10 we would never have done it," he said.

The Crows also had pick No. 43 gained as part of the trade that saw Kyle Cheney and Luke Lowden join Adelaide. They used it on Mitch McGovern, a tall forward with the ability to play at either end of the ground.  

In a nice twist given its trading with Hawthorn during the exchange period, the Crows also secured Harry Dear, son of former Hawk and Norm Smith medallist Paul Dear with its final pick.