The Crows have just four recognised onballers, Patrick Dangerfield, David Mackay, Myke Cook and pinch-hitter Jared Petrenko, who possess breakneck speed, with experienced players like Scott Thompson, Bernie Vince, Simon Goodwin, Tyson Edwards and Brent Reilly better-suited to clearance or link-up roles.
Injured wingman Brodie Martin and untried draftee Sam Shaw are two other developing prospects with pace.
The same Adelaide team used quick thinking and quick ball movement to get to within a kick of a semi-final last season, but the explosion of full-ground defensive pressure across the competition has seen leg speed become a greater asset in 2010.
Last year the Sydney Swans, once renowned as a dour, defensive outfit, targeted players with pace, recruiting speed demons Gary Rohan, Lewis Jetta, Trent Dennis-Lane and Byron Sumner with four of the club’s five picks in the NAB AFL Draft.
The Crows overlooked Jetta in favour of promising key-position prospect Daniel Talia, who they rated as the next-best player, and ended up with a raft of mid-sized utilities.
Rendell, who was responsible for recruiting young gun Patrick Dangerfield, said Adelaide would apply the same ‘next-best player’ approach to its first pick in this year’s draft.
“You’ve just got to take the next best player with your first pick. We took Talia last year with our first pick. Did we need Daniel Talia for the next couple of years? Probably not, but I can certainly see him down the track filling a key position role in defence,” Rendell said.
“We’ll take what we regard as the next-best player and then with how far out the second-round pick is likely to be, we might look to address our needs there.
“Speed is always a factor in recruiting, so it won’t be any more so this year. It’s part of that package in terms of a player’s talent. We factor all that in, but it’s no good having a bloke, who can run [20m] in two-point-eight seconds but can’t find the ball.”
The 15th-placed Crows, who pride themselves on being competitive and not bottoming-out for draft picks, have picked a bad year for a form slump.
The AFL has taken away the priority draft picks, which have seen Carlton and Melbourne rise from cellar-dwellers a few years back to genuine finals contenders this season.
The new Gold Coast club will have picks 1,2,3,5,7,9,11,13 and 15 in the first round of this year’s draft, meaning that if Adelaide remains in 15th place the club won’t have a selection until No.6.
The Crows have never had a draft pick higher than No.7 in 2000 when they infamously called the name of troubled Dandenong teenager Laurence Angwin.
The Blues’ salary-cap breaches gifted Adelaide pick No.2 in the 2002 NAB AFL Draft, but this was on-traded to North Melbourne as part of the Wayne Carey trade.
Rendell was hopeful the club could mount a resurgence in the second half of the season, but said he’d broadened the talent search ahead of the November 18 draft just in case.
“At the start of the season I was thinking I might have a pick between No.17 and 20, but it might end up being a bit before that,” he said.
“It’s a bit too early to work out where you’re going to end up, but I’ve changed my focus since the start of the year and have started to look at some players I didn’t think I’d have to look at because I thought they would have been gone by our pick.
“The field has been broadened for us…that makes some people happy and others not.”
