Drafting key to AA team * Jon Anderson
* From: Herald Sun
* September 16, 2009
LIKE the side or not, this year's All-Australian team represented a strong vote of confidence in the competition's drafting system.
No fewer than 12 of the 22 selected players were picked with draft picks higher than 30 and several, including Nick Maxwell, Aaron Sandilands and Matthew Boyd, were rookie promotions.
This in a time when we're constantly told the introduction of two new teams will make it almost impossible for sides to improve significantly via the draft.
It clearly all comes down to clever spotting as Monday night's All-Australian side proves.
The team conclusively proves that plenty of gems exist outside the top 20 and, while the recruiting caper may have become more of an exact science, the 2008 draft has already produced lower-order players of serious promise.
They include David Zaharakis (23), Nick Suban (24),
Jayden Post (26), Dayne Beams (29), Daniel Hannebery (30), Jamie Bennell (35), Mitch Robinson (40), Liam Anthony (43) and Neville Jetta (51).
Add the continuing success of rookie players being promoted in 2009 - Aaron Joseph, Michael Quinn, Greg Broughton, Matthew de Boer, Shane Mumford, Robin Nahas, Zac Dawson and Liam Picken - and you have a handy line-up.
So it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom.
Take the full-back line of this year's All-Australian team consisting of Corey Enright, Matthew Scarlett and Brian Lake.
Enright and Lake were just very astute picks at 47 and 71, while Scarlett was taken by Geelong as a father-son.
So where would Scarlett have gone had he entered the draft? Given his exposed form with the Geelong Falcons and Vic Country side, between picks 30 and 40 would have been realistic.
The other two father-sons, Gary Ablett and Jonathan Brown, were rated as juniors above the third-round category of Scarlett, with Ablett somewhere between 15 and 25 and Brown a clear top five.
Paul Chapman was selected All-Australian for the first time, but has long been a star of the competition. Yet he got through to 31 in the 1999 draft despite a couple of high finishes in the Morrish Medal.
Geelong got Chapman after acquiring pick 31 from Carlton for Michael Mansfield, who had been a fine player with the Cats but was retired from the game at the end of 2001.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/drafting-key-to-aa-team/story-e6frf9jf-1225774139923