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Until Ashton Agar’s sudden emergence on Thursday night, Tom Boyd was comfortably the most wanted teenager in Australian sport.
The kid has it made. At just 17, he’s equipped with nearly all the tools needed to dominate an AFL goalsquare and by the end of the year, he could be playing for anyone.
Well, not quite anyone – not Greater Western Sydney. Not if they are to be believed, anyway.
Overstocked with key forwards, the Giants’ decision to put their likely number one pick on the table some five months away from the AFL draft has sent armchair list managers into a flurry.
Whoever gets that pick will undoubtably select Boyd, the 199cm, 102kg monster who entered the mainstream footballing consciousness last month, presented to us as a modern reincarnation of Tony Lockett.
It’s an incredible level of hype for a young draftee, but if there was any doubt over his ability to cope with the pressure it was gone as soon as he started fronting cameras.
You’d expect nerves, but no – Boyd talks as if he’s been doing this for years, tackling curly questions with the straight bat of a 200-gamer.
In every way it appears Tom Boyd was born to play AFL football. He is as sure a thing as the system could possibly offer.
But what makes his such an engrossing tale – far more than just the ‘watch out for this kid’ story that came along with O’Meara, Martin, Whitfield, Swallow, Patton and the like – is that we have no idea what happens next.
For most of the last decade we’ve known who will finish bottom of the ladder every year months out from the end of the season – and on almost every occasion, we’ve known which standout junior was going to be selected first, well in advance. It’s all been a bit tedious.
It feels like a lifetime ago that there was even a modicum of surprise about the number one pick.
But things are different this time. We know it will be Boyd, but he will go to whoever wants him the most – and given just how rare his type of player is, the majority of clubs will surely be jostling to prove to GWS it is them.
The AFL has made moves over the last few years to loosen the restrictions on player movements – partly to appease the AFLPA, but also to sustain publicity and interest through the off-season as a pre-emptive measure against the other codes.
The point is that the Boyd scenario is brand new territory, and as the season proper winds down, the trade talk will ramp up.
It’s the kind of publicity dreams are made of for the AFL, and it’s particularly valuable on the back of a string of compromised drafts.
There have been calls for an draft lottery in the AFL for years, mostly in response to tanking. But if the AFL really wants to dominate the headlines over the summer months, it could serve a double function.
A weighted draft lottery, like in the NBA, would still help bad teams regenerate. It would also install a permanent sense of uncertainty about who goes where.
It is the uncertainty that is key, and the longer we can experience it, the better.
Hope is such a powerful force in sport. Just thinking you might be in with a shot of getting a player like Boyd is comfort enough to keep the chin up through a long, cold winter.
It allows fans from all clubs, not just the wooden spooners-elect, to imagine what your team’s forward line would look like with Tom Boyd the centrepiece for the next 10 years.
If someone can actually satisfy the Giants is another matter. Surely if the scouts are right, it could be worth a bit of short-term pain in losing a top-line player if it gets you someone like Boyd.
For now, there’s something in this rare auctioneering of the top pick and Tom Boyd’s future that feels fresh and exciting. Let’s have more of it.
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