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• Rookie Draft: What your club says
• National Draft verdict: How did your club fare?
BY THE time Hawthorn chose Tasmanian midfielder Kieran Lovell at pick No.22 of Tuesday night's NAB AFL Draft, each state and territory around Australia had provided a player to the national competition.
The spread of talent early in the national intake was part of the promising numbers to come out of this week's national and rookie drafts, which wrapped up on Friday morning.
The total new talent joining the AFL across the drafts was 112 players (discounting delisted players returning as rookies). Victoria, as is usually the case, accounted for nearly half of the talent.
Forty-eight players were picked from the Vic Metro and Country areas, making up 43 per cent, a figure that would probably have been a little more if not for a weaker Vic Metro side this season.
In the most promising sign for the game's growth, NSW/ACT and Queensland provided a total of 22 players to the overall draft pool – meaning nearly 20 per cent of talent came from the developing states.
Of course, the northern academy clubs took on the most exciting prospects for themselves. Callum Mills became a Swan, Jacob Hopper, Matt Kennedy and Harrison Himmelberg were three top-20 picks for the Giants, and Ben Keays and Eric Hipwood were early selections for the Lions.
But at Friday's rookie draft rival clubs snapped up another handful of players who had been through academy zones and were left over to the national pool.
Of that group, Jock Cornell joined the Cats having been overlooked by the Giants, Matthew Uebergang became a Docker after not getting a shot with the Lions last year, and the Saints took on Nick Coughlan out of GWS' region.
The concern for clubs and the AFL will lay in Western Australia, where just 12 players found homes via both drafts. Just seven players from the traditional football state were added to senior lists, and just three of those were from its under-18 system.
The state has already begun its quest to improve its program, and this week appointed former Fremantle recruiting manager Adam Jones as its new talent manager.
Although next year is projected to be a stronger WA batch, the dip in talent from the region shouldn't be seen as a cyclical issue. Recruiters are already worried about the lack of depth they saw in the state's under-16s side at the national championships this year.
Clubs continue to look beyond the obvious to add to their lists – seven players (or 6.3 per cent of the total intake) were from rival sports or came on board as international rookies.
But they have turned their back on the pre-season draft, with the listing mechanism seemingly a victim of the free agency system. The AFL sees the PSD as a valuable equalisation tool – it gives the bottom-placed club and teams at that end of the ladder some hope of attracting a player from a rival outside the trade process.
However, with clubs completely shunning it on Friday morning, it seems its only use is as a part of trade period brinkmanship if a deal cannot be struck.
The pre-season draft's absence this year also spoke to the thinner draft pool, with clubs more prepared to go into next season with shorter senior lists and carry more rookies.
