Croweater bonanzaJason Phelan
Fri 17 Aug, 2012THE SHARP end of this year's NAB AFL Draft is set to have a distinctly South Australian feel with up to five Croweaters a chance to be taken inside the top 10 picks.
Victorian midfielder Lachie Whitfield is the standout No.1 prospect, but SA's Jimmy Toumpas, Brodie Grundy, Ben Kennedy, Troy Menzel and Sam Mayes are queuing up to be taken after the Dandenong Stingrays star.
Vic Metro outdid the South Australian team for the overall honours at this year's NAB AFL Under-18 Championships, but the tournament saw several SA players stamp themselves as genuine top-10 chances.
SA coach and state high performance manager Brenton Phillips said his latest state group was a delight to work with and the experience has left him confident of a good showing at November's national draft meeting on the Gold Coast.
"Each and every one of them is driven and committed to progressing their football," Phillips said.
A year after Chad Wingard (Port Adelaide) and Brad McKenzie (North Melbourne) were the only South Australians drafted in the first round, SA football is in a healthy state.
Sam Colquhoun, Harley Montgomery, Emannuel Irra, Tim O'Brien, Brodie Murdoch, Oliver Johnson and Matt McDonough are among the Croweaters who have made a case for selection at the draft.
Toumpas, who captained the SA side, will likely attract the most attention with the classy midfielder earning All-Australian honours despite a carnival hindered by a hip complaint that ultimately required surgery.
"That's not going to hold him back though," Phillips said.
"He'll take a little bit of time to recover obviously, but he's the type of bloke who I think will bounce back from injuries pretty quickly.
"He's one of those guys who will suffer a six-week injury and be back in five because he does everything right. He's very meticulous in his preparation."
Toumpas has been invited to the NAB AFL Draft Combine, to be held at Etihad Stadium from October 2-5, but will not recover in time to take part in the physical testing.
Grundy is the standout ruck prospect in this draft pool despite being late to the game from a basketball background.
He made his senior SANFL debut for Sturt this year and Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs, who will have two picks each inside the top 10, will be monitoring his progress closely.
Kennedy, a busy midfielder-forward with pace and a thumping left-foot kick, was looked at by several clubs ahead of last year's GWS mini-draft and he carried on that form to earn All Australian honours, along with Toumpas and Grundy, this year.
Menzel, the brother of Geelong's Daniel, has been a regular in Central Districts' senior side and kicked 15 goals in the first two games of the national carnival before succumbing to groin soreness.
He made his return in the Centrals' reserves last week and kicked two goals.
"Troy had a few weeks off there, but he just knows right away where to find the footy and does a couple of special things," Phillips said.
Mayes is one of the most intriguing prospects in the draft pool. He wowed recruiters as an under-age player with a carnival worthy of All-Australian selection in 2011, but didn't hit the same heights this year.
"After last year's champs people probably expected that he'd just walk in, be All-Australian again, then go on and be drafted and everything would be rosy, but football doesn't work like that," Phillips said.
"You have your ups and downs and that's really the test of character to see how a player comes out the other side of it.
"He was working extremely hard, all his GPS data told me that. I knew that he would be able to turn it around eventually and I thought in his two games in Melbourne he did just that.
"He's done really well since. He could have quite easily gone back and sulked, but he went back to North Adelaide and hasn't missed as beat."
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