Recruiting officer Matthew Clarke discusses the upcoming draft in the Talking Tigers podcast on the RFC website ...
VIDEO: om.au/video?guid=698001
* There’s been a hell of a lot of planning and preparation, not only just this year, and for this year’s group but probably over two years – even three years – from the under 16s. We go back that far and then project ahead to next year as well. We’re already planning for next year and that’s why we look at the draft in terms of position type. Do we go to the draft and try and get some outside run? Let’s have a look at next year. There’s lots in next year’s draft so we may go a little bit lighter this year. So, we don’t really want to reach too far if we think there’s some good talent coming up later on.
* There’s a lot of work that goes in, for sure. We go to the end of November this year, probably have December and a bit of January off, and we start again.
* We work heavily with, General Manager of Player Personnel and List Management, Blair Hartley in rating our players in this draft against the players on other AFL clubs’ lists. So basically, when it comes to the trade period and free agency, Blair can come in and say, I’m thinking about trading, let’s say we’ve got pick 25 . . . what’s the rating of players, who you think are going to be there at 25. And we match that up.
Blair might say, ‘Well, should we do the deal?’ ‘No, we think there’ll be five players rated higher than that guy you’re going to bring in’. ‘Okay, well, let’s not do the deal’. Or, we might go, ‘Well, the draft is really shallow, let’s do it for that position type’. Obviously, Blair watches a lot more AFL footy than we do and he can give us some information on how the kids are going at AFL level that we’ve picked in previous years but also vice-versa. It’s critical that we have good communication.
http://www.richmondfc.com.au/news/2014-10-20/how-the-tigers-plan-for-the-draft
