NEXT week's NAB AFL Mid-Season Rookie Draft will be the first staged for 26 years. Here are nine things you may not know about its history.
1. Monday will be the first mid-season draft since 1993. The AFL ran the mid-season draft for only four years, from 1990-93, before abandoning it.
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2. In total there have been 163 players picked in mid-season drafts. The first year saw 45 selections, before 38 and 49 in the following two seasons. By the last mid-season draft, clubs used only 31 picks.
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3. The first ever player picked in a mid-season draft was Laurie Schache, the father of current Western Bulldogs forward Josh. Schache was selected by Brisbane with the No.1 choice in the 1990 mid-season draft and played 29 games and kicked 64 goals for the club in two seasons before heading back to South Australia. He tragically died in 2002.
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4. The mid-season draft went out on an odd note. The final selection of the last mid-season draft was Brad Hardie, who was chosen by Sydney, having previously played with Collingwood, Brisbane and Footscray, where he won the 1985 Brownlow Medal. The Swans gave him another go as a 30-year-old, but he failed to play a game for the club.
Brad Hardie won a Brownlow with the Dogs, but wound up at Sydney after the 1993 mid-season draft
5. Hardie wasn't alone in not making a splash from the mid-season draft. Only four players from the 163 selections went on to play 100 games or more after being picked as a mid-season addition. One hundred and eighteen of the players picked never played a game from that selection (many had previously played at VFL/AFL level).
6. The biggest hit of the mid-season draft was Daryn Cresswell. He played 244 games for the Swans, including their 1996 Grand Final loss to North Melbourne, and was named in the club's team of the century. He was taken with pick 39 in the 1992 intake.
Sydney champs Daryn Cresswell and Paul Kelly in 2000. Picture AFL Photos
7. Dale Kickett has a place in mid-season draft folklore. Kickett had already played for West Coast, Fitzroy and St Kilda when Essendon gave him a chance at the 1993 mid-season draft after starring for Claremont in the WAFL. He played only eight games for the Bombers in 1994 but was then part of the trade Essendon did with Fremantle to land Matthew Lloyd. Kickett played 135 games for the Dockers – his fifth and final club – and Lloyd became Essendon's greatest ever goalkicker.
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8. Jamie Grant is a two-time mid-season drafted player. Grant, whose brother Chris is a Bulldogs great and now the club's football manager, was drafted to his brother's club in the first mid-season draft in 1990. He managed five games for the Dogs, before then being selected in the 1993 mid-season draft by the Swans, where he didn't play another senior game.
9. Even though the last mid-season draft was 25 years ago, there are links to last year's NAB AFL Draft. Jamie Duursma was delisted by Melbourne after the 1989 season and later reselected in the next mid-season draft. Duursma didn't play another game for the Dees, though, having also played for Sydney and Brisbane. His nephew is Port Adelaide young gun Xavier Duursma, who was a first-round selection last year.
>> The 2019 NAB AFL Mid-Season Rookie Draft will be broadcast LIVE on AFL.com.au, the AFL Live Official App and Fox Footy from 6.30pm AEST on Monday, May 27
