Circle the names, then the long wait
Emma Quayle | August 2, 2008 - 8:17PM
MAVERICK Weller, Jack Hutchins, Trent McKenzie, Josh Toy, Alex Keath and Luke Russell. Never heard of them?
This time next year, you may well have. All six have impressed at the under-16 championships this week and, with the impending arrival of the Gold Coast, are among the young football talent that may be tucked away at the end of next year to help form the AFL's new team.
The players at any under-16 championships are either one or two years too young for the draft - in the case of gifted 14-year-old Northern Territory forward Curtley Hampton, they're even further off - but the carnival is a valuable part of the year for the AFL's recruiters.
Some drop in for a few days, while others stick around for a longer look, and the week gives them a sense of who is coming and how good they might be. It's a chance to circle a few names and get an idea of what they should be doing with their existing list, in preparation for the type and quality of players on the horizon.
"It's a good time to start gathering some information so that, when you get to the start of the next year, you're not starting out with 400 faces you've never seen before," said Richmond's list manager, Craig Cameron.
"You get an idea of the cream of the next year's draft, and you can start planning how to follow those guys. We go to the under-15s for the same reason, so we're not continually re-inventing the wheel each year. The idea is to have a wave of them coming through."The carnival, added Hawthorn recruiter Gary Buckenara, was never about scratching any names off your list. If a boy played there, then got injured and missed his entire under-18 season, having seen him play as a 16-year-old will have helped, he said. You were better able to assess and predict a player's physical scope if you had seen him early on, too.
"You look for signs, rather than complete performances," said Buckenara. "They all fill out at different rates, so I think what you do is circle a few names and follow them along. By the time they're 18, you can start to look at the body shape a bit more, already knowing how much they have developed."
The point of difference at this year's under-16s is that the best players on offer will most likely end up on the Gold Coast, not with any of the existing teams.
The boys listed above were born in the first four months of 1992 - until the draft age was changed late last year, they would have been eligible to be drafted at the end of 2009. Instead, the Gold Coast will probably have first call on them as part of the new club's draft concessions.
Others may also emerge - along the lines of Jack Watts, who was injured and missed the under-16s last year, and in the space of 10 months became a contender for the No. 1 pick this year.
Looking further ahead, the likes of David Swallow - the 15-year-old West Australian captain and younger brother of Andrew - is already looming as a high draft choice in 2010, and could also be Queensland-bound should the Gold Coast collect as many early picks as expected.
Did that make it less valuable for the recruiters to be sunning themselves last week? Buckenara thought it was almost more important. "You've still got to identify the talent and there might be one that we like who sneaks through and doesn't get picked up by the Gold Coast," he said. "You've still got to be very thorough with the whole thing."
Cameron agreed. "We don't know what the concessions are yet or who they're going to pick," he said. "It's important we get a feel for who they're choosing from, so that we can at least make a prediction on who they might and might not take.
"From that, you get an idea of what the depth's going to be beyond that, so when we make list-management decisions we can think 'OK, the 2010 draft's going to be a bit weaker than normal', or it might have pretty good depth, so we've got to make our calls based on that.
"It's important to do that because when you're doing two- or three-year contracts for players, you've got to make sure that if you think a good draft is coming, you have the opportunity to take picks in it. We still need to know exactly what's coming, even if we don't get a look at a bunch of them."
So, how is it looking? Will the 16 clubs miss out on a lot? Will the Gold Coast be getting some good kids. "There will be some good players there," said Buckenara. "If they end up with the first five picks in 2010, I'd say they'd get some beauties."
The boys turning 17 next year, added Cameron, were an even group. "I think they're going to have a lot of players to pick from, so it will be interesting to see who they do choose," he said. "There might not be a Nicholas Naitanui running around, but there's some very good players to choose from and some others will come through, too."http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/circle-the-names-then-the-long-wait/2008/08/02/1217097610816.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
