The biggest draft bust from all 18 AFL teams this centuryAndrew Slevison
SEN
13 May 2020Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
It allows us to look back at decisions made in the past and dissect them to within an inch of their respective lives.
Choices made at the draft table are often criticised. It really is a difficult thing to forecast what a teenager is going to deliver on the football field when he is inexperienced, largely untried, still growing and learning and at times even a relative unknown.
Every club over the journey has made one or two blunders on draft night. Decisions that have come back to haunt the selectors in question.
Whether it be bad luck with injury, homesickness, lack of senior chances, off-field issues or simply an over-hyped opinion of a player during his junior days, draft errors are a common occurrence such is human nature and the inexact science of predicting what a person can do. There’s also the regret of seeing someone taken next in line who simply flourishes.
We’ve delved right in and looked back no further than two decades to bring you the biggest draft bungles since the year 2000.
RICHMONDJarrad Oakley-Nicholls (2005)The Tigers endured a couple of draft disappointments over the years but the selection of Oakley-Nicholls at pick six in 2005 stands out as the biggest. There were initial reports of incompetence regarding this selection, but the suggestion that the club had never laid eyes on him live before the draft is in fact an urban myth. Tigers recruiters had actually watched him at the ’05 U18 National Championships in Melbourne. Richmond had narrowed it down to one of three indigenous boys - Oakley-Nicholls, Courtenay Dempsey and Travis Varcoe - and opted for the East Perth product. It never really worked out for him though and he would play just 13 games over four years in the yellow and black before joining the Eagles in 2010 where he would go without another AFL appearance. People may wonder why Richard Tambling being taken before Buddy Franklin didn't lob on top here, but Tambling had plenty of scope and even the Hawks had shown interest. The Oakley-Nicholls choice simply proved to be a flop.
https://www.sen.com.au/news/2020/05/13/the-biggest-draft-bust-from-all-18-teams-this-century/
