Welcome to the complete review of the 2015 AFL drafting period. We’ve been waiting for this day since the trading period ended as the last major event of the year.
There were 133 picks made in the National and Rookie drafts with many exciting new and recycled prospects making their way to the respective clubs. I’ll be summing up the drafts and the players selected throughout this article.
What they said
Before the national draft and throughout much of the year, there was talk that this year’s draft crop was shallow and would drop away soon after the first round had finished. I viewed the best of the best of this draft crop at a similar level to 2013, though many top prospects such as Jacob Hopper, Matthew Kennedy, Callum Mills and Ben Keays have pre-existing ties to clubs.
Truth be told, beyond Round 1 in the National Draft there were plenty of sliders and top talent to pick from, lasting well into the late 30s which was largely unexpected. Many clubs in the second round would be incredibly pleased with the selections they were able to make.
The sliders
There were many sliders this year. I’ll take you through my top five most surprising sliders of this year’s national draft.
Ryan Burton was selected by the Hawks at pick 19 after being surprisingly overlooked by Carlton and Adelaide, both of whom were reportedly very interested in the talented forward. Burton missed all of 2015 through injury and was touted as a sure top three selection as an under-ager in 2014, especially after kicking a bag of five goals against Western Australia in the U18 Championships of 2014. However, in similar circumstances to Jake Lever last season Burton was able to slide to Hawthorn near the end of the first round, which should prove to be an absolute bargain.
Darcy Tucker was similarly touted as a top-five selection this time last year, praised for his professionalism and fantastic run and carry with elite kicking skills which saw him make the All Australian team as an underage prospect. This year Tucker slid and didn’t perform to expectations as he tried to focus on improving his midfield game. He wasn’t completely fit, with talk about his ankle troubling him at times throughout the season. At pick 27 he’s an absolute steal with plenty of scope to improve.
Riley Bonner is a running defender fit for the modern game. He has the height important for intercept marking if required but ultimately is a fantastic rebound player with elite kicking skills. He’s dominant on the left foot but has no issue using both sides of the body and rarely misses a target. He puts the ball in good positions and his attack will suit Port Adelaide’s game plan perfectly. He was touted as a first round pick and has slid to 37.
Harley Balic isn’t quick but has the ability to find space and seems to have plenty of time when he gets the ball. His composure is similar to that of Scott Pendlebury. He is a strong one-on-one player who can play at half forward or push into the midfield and accumulate the ball with relative ease. There were question marks regarding the penetration of his kicking, but there is plenty to work with for Balic, and Fremantle have managed to pull off two fantastic picks in the second round.
Rhys Mathieson hunts the ball like an animal in contested situations and is a brilliant extractor. He’s a great size at around 185cm and just 79kg showing plenty of room for his inside game to develop further once he puts on more size, meaning we may only be seeing a fraction of what he has to offer. A dual U18 All Australian, it’s amazing how far Mathieson fell in the draft and I believe he’ll be looked at as the bargain of this year’s crop. Talked up as a top five pick last year and still talked about as a first rounder for much of this year, it shocked many to see him slide so far on draft night.
The bolters
In turn with draft sliders there will inevitably be players who have bolted or surprisingly risen up the order on draft night or in the lead up to the event, and we’ll be focusing on those who in particular featured in the first round.
Clayton Oliver ended up being the fourth overall pick in the draft as he went to the Demons, and the third ‘live’ pick in the draft after being behind Callum Mills who was tied to the Swans through their Academy.
Oliver didn’t play in the U18 Championships and was talked about very little throughout the year, but rose into first round calculations after taking out the Morrish Medal for the best player in the TAC Cup. It could be mistaken for flavour of the month or that his true ability was finally noticed by the public, but soon Oliver was talked about not only as a late first round pick, but an early option with Melbourne and Essendon both interested with early picks.
Oliver came from nowhere in the last couple of months in the lead-up and was pretty much a given for Melbourne’s pick going into the night.
Daniel Rioli was taken by the Tigers at pick 15 which was predicted in the lead-up to the draft.
Richmond drafted for needs and were interested in a small forward with X-Factor, so Rioli bolted into calculations a couple of weeks before the draft. Many believe his family name helped his draft stocks rise and many saw him more of a second round selection, despite Rioli being one of the best performers at the draft combine. There has been some criticism thrown around but overall Rioli was the best small forward available after Milera and Ah Chee were taken by Adelaide and Gold Coast respectively.
Harrison Himmelberg is a Giants Academy player who was bid on by the Crows at their second pick, which GWS matched to take him at pick 16. Himmelberg is a forward with good athleticism and excellent marking ability. His kicking skills have been somewhat inconsistent throughout the season and Himmelberg is not without his flaws, with a few things that he needs to work on to be able to make it at AFL level. However there is plenty to work with and Himmelberg was bid on by the Adelaide Crows earlier than many experts expected come draft night.
Tom Doedee made his way to the Crows after the Giants matched the bid on Himmelberg. Doedee was possibly an even bigger surprise, with very little being spoken about the medium defender for a majority of the season.
Featuring high in the power rankings of very few people, casual fans could be forgiven for thinking they’d blown a draft pick. However Doedee is incredibly clean and composed with ball in hand and has a number of useful attributes ranging from intercept marking and rebound to undoubted attack on the football.
Personal power rankings
This year I didn’t create a phantom draft, but I was still interested in listing the players in the order that I liked them in. This takes into account not only their recent form but their scope to improve through the means of development at a professional club as well as accounting for injuries and the like. I won’t bore you with the entire list, but my top 20 is as follows.
1. Darcy Parish
2. Aaron Francis
3. Jacob Weitering
4. Jacob Hopper
5. Callum Mills
6. Joshua Schache
7. Benjamin Keays
8. Ryan Burton
9. Matthew Kennedy
10. Wayne Milera
11. Harry McKay
12. Jade Gresham
13. Rhys Mathieson
14. Clayton Oliver
15. Eric Hipwood
16. Darcy Tucker
17. Callum Ah Chee
18. Riley Bonner
19. Charlie Curnow
20. Sam Weideman
So my power rankings were complete, the draft was complete, and instead of writing a draft review in the same format as everybody else I decided to create a ladder based on my power rankings and the actual draft selections.
It’s simple, if a player was picked at pick eight in this year’s draft but I ranked him at four then the club will receive +4 points on the ladder, however if I had pick eight at pick 16, the team would be minus eight points. The results are below.
Brisbane Lions: +49
St Kilda Saints: +23
Port Adelaide Power: +22
Fremantle Dockers: +21
North Melbourne Kangaroos: +21
Hawthorn Hawks: +4
West Coast Eagles: -9
Western Bulldogs: -9
Essendon Bombers: -13
Adelaide Crows: -14
Gold Coast Suns: -14
Carlton Blues: -15
Greater Western Sydney: -15
Geelong Cats: -24
Sydney Swans: -30
Richmond Tigers: -37
Collingwood Magpies: -48
Melbourne Demons: -51
It is important to recognise that this ladder does not represent the amount of talent that any given team has bought into their club (see Carlton, four first round picks but a -15 rating) but rather is a guide as to how well I thought they selected at their particular selections, as I see very little point in ranking teams harshly for not bringing in enough top end talent if they didn’t have any top end selections.
This puts the teams on an even playing field to try and figure out how well the clubs did with their respective draft picks, with the idea of taking into account the draft pick that they actually used. Based on the results a satisfactory mark would include a score from around +20 to -20 and anything above or below is either impressive or lacking (of course in my personal opinion, I don’t claim to be as knowledgeable as professional recruiters, but it’s an interesting exercise nevertheless).
Rookie draft bargains
Every year there are a few prospects that slip through the cracks of the national draft and get picked up as rookie selections. I’ll highlight the top four bargains, in no particular order, who fell to the rookie draft.
Jesse Glass-McCasker was picked up by the Blues with the first pick in the rookie draft. The 195cm key defender is an athletic prospect who offers fantastic rebound for a player of his size. He finished sixth in the absolute standing vertical jump and fifth in the absolute running vertical jump at the Draft Combine, as well as being the sixth most agile in the agility test with a time of 8.22 seconds.
Gach Nyuon is an exciting ruck prospect of Sudanese descent. Nyuon won All Australian honours for the Under 18s this year as a ruckman as he has proved throughout the season that of this year’s draft crop, his tap work is second to none. He understands the game well despite playing for only a few years and has many aspects of his game to improve, but looks a likely type.
Nick O’Kearney, at this time last year, was touted by many trusted draft gurus as a potential top 10 selection. A year is a long time in football and dropped to the rookie draft, likely due to not being elite in any one area, but rather just doing everything quite well without being particularly damaging.
The midfielder is a great accumulator of the ball who works well in the packs and distributes the ball out into space with ease and has plenty of footy smarts.
There’s questions over his ceiling but in the rookie draft it’s hard to go wrong with O’Kearney when the bad thing about him is that he only does everything to a good standard. The Saints have shown in recent seasons with Eli Templeton and Jack Sinclair that they’ve been able to uncover gems where you’d least expect to find them, so O’Kearney is in good hands.
Will Snelling completed the 30m repeat sprints, agility test, beep test and 3km time trial all in the top eight of the respective categories at the Draft Combine. The small midfielder captained the South Australian side in the National Championships and averaged over 20 disposals a game. This lead to him being selected in the U18 All Australian side and won South Australia’s team MVP award. Although being vertically challenged, Snelling has plenty to offer at AFL level.
The success story
There’s some sort of success story every season coming out of the draft, and this year the title undoubtedly belongs to the three Sudanese boys from this year’s crop that have successfully made it to an AFL list.
Gach Nyuon, Reuben William and Mabior Chol were selected by Essendon, Brisbane and Richmond respectively, as they now take up 60 per cent of the AFL’s Sudanese player base, joining Majak Daw (drafted in 2009) and Aliir Aliir (drafted in 2013).
It’s exciting times for the AFL when the game has successfully developed talent and provided an opportunity for an ethnic group which historically has not had much to do with our great game. These three players play a thrilling brand of football and it’s a huge success for them to make it into the big league.
Immediate impact
There are four players who I believe are truly capable of high-level immediate impact next season. Keep your AFL Fantasy pens at the ready.
Jacob Weitering – The number one pick is a key defender, yes. However, he offers plenty of rebound and is a strong mark who rarely loses a one on one due to his reading of the play. At his size he should be more than capable to play often next season and do fairly well.
Clayton Oliver – Oliver has a big body and is very strong in the contest. This will directly benefit his ability to compete at AFL level if he is given sufficient game time. It’s commonplace for mature-bodied draftees to impact in their first seasons, similar to Ollie Wines and Luke Dunstan.
Jacob Hopper – Hopper can impact games early on for the same reasons as Oliver. He’s a complete bull and has enough strength and size to mix it with the big boys already. If he can break into the Giants’ midfield he’s one to watch closely, as he’d also be in the mix for the Rising Star.
Aaron Francis – Francis has a strong body and more importantly plenty of attitude on the field, he won’t be pushed around. Essendon have a fairly strong backline, but if he can break into the team or play in other positions that he’s capable of playing, then Francis is one that you’d expect to fare especially well.
The draft this year was overall very interesting, the ‘shallow’ draft provided plenty of talent well into the third round and has some of the best top-end talent I’ve seen in recent years, with plenty of balance of ready-made players and long term prospects.
We have another year until we get excited by the draft again. In the meantime let’s get through the pre-season and enjoy 2016 and track the progress of some of these highly-touted teenagers, on whom we place the utmost responsibility and expectation.
Macca
Guest
Bazza - in 2005 the (year after drafting Roughhead, Franklin & Lewis and 4 years after getting Hodge and Mitchell) the Hawks won just 5 games & had a percentage of 82.2%, 3 years later they were premiers. Success looks a long way off when you are at the bottom of a rebuild but can come quicker than expected. If you look at Melbourne they have a very good young on ball brigade and effectively add Patracca and Oliver to it this year and now have to long term quality young forwards in Hogan and Weideman plus a very good Key defender in McDonald - a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are in place for them and success could come rapidly. As for the blues they have a premium mid in Cripps, a large number of players on the list 22 or under from which quality players could emerge (Graham, Buckley & Docherty head the list) and have added 4 draftees from the top 25 this year and will add at least another 2 next year - they are further away than the Dees but they could be anything in 3 years if time shows they nailed the 2015 & 2016 drafts.
Bazza
Guest
It`ll take the DEMONS and BLUES 10 years to get where the Hawks were in 2008..But as you said, they need to start NOW..
Macca
Guest
"Carlton,they are in big trouble,from your calculations their drafting could prove to be yet another failure" Hmmm for a start Jack said "Based on the results a satisfactory mark would include a score from around +20 to -20" Given the BLues are at -15 Jacks calculations have them at satisfactory not failure but more importantly if we adjust Jacks figures for players Carlton could actually have taken (ie remove the Academy picks of Hopper, Mills, Keays, Kennedy & Hipwood) and we get the Blues at a score of -1. If we further adjust for the fact that the blues weren't looking for mid's but instead KPP's and the fact that Jack's ranking of Weitering at 3 and Curnow at 19 is up for debate to say the least and the statement "from your calculations their drafting could prove to be yet another failure" can not logically be made.
Col from Brissie
Guest
Mattyb, I understand where you are coming from but I think clubs like Carlton and Melbourne have belatedly realised that the direction they were going in was wrong and they have seen clubs like Geelong and Hawthorn enjoying sustained success. They have looked at those clubs and identified what they need to do and have implemented plans that hopefully will bring them similar success. Will it work and do the supporters have the patience to wait for that success I don't know, but as long as the clubs are open and honest about what they are doing then supporters at least should be able to see a light at the and of the tunnel. Supporters need to realise that it is an 18 team competition and all clubs are striving for the ultimate success and that success is going to be hard to achieve. In a perfect world each club would win a premiership but that would mean you have to wait 18 years between each one. I know it is hard to believe at this time but there is going to be a time when clubs like Melbourne and Carlton are successful and the Hawthorns and Geelongs are going to struggle for success.
Jack
Roar Pro
Thanks Matty. Keep in mind the power rankings ladder doesn't take into account the amount of talent a club has bought in per say, but rather the players they picked up at their respective selections. Carlton bought in some very good talent and I don't believe it will be a failure. At the beginning of the rebuild I think they've done well to identify some key position staples that will be 12+ year players for them in Weitering and McKay (along with Curnow). Despite ranking some midfielders ahead of a few of these players, it is clear that the Blues have identified a need to bring in some key position talent (which they've been lacking) and they have done that pretty well. Similarly with Melbourne, while I didn't rank Oliver and Weideman as high as they were picked, most of the negatives came from Mitch King who I ranked around the 60-70 mark despite being picked up at 42, it just goes to show that the exercise is fairly fragile. Forgetting my opinions on where Oliver and Weideman in particular are ranked, they are two pretty good prospects to add, although I think Parish would have added some needed outside class to the Demons midfield which is already fairly well stacked for inside types. Although there is definitely something explosive that the recruiters have identified in Oliver. It will be interesting to track these two players over their careers.
mattyb
Guest
Fair points Col and please understand I did mention some other clubs in my comment to the author.On Carlton I do understand they are at the beginning of a long rebuild and applaud them for finally doing so. It is fair though to ask if the five years is feasible. The leadership at Carlton is poor.Murphy is a good footballer but there isn't much else.Cripps winning the BF is positive but on the flip side it could be considered concerning if you were to look at it on a team basis (note I said could).Will Carltons supporters be willing to wait another five years?If no,will backroom boys be able to sit patiently while attendances fall and money is lost.The lack of Friday,Saturday night games might hurt Carlton more than we realise at this point financially.All I was really saying is Melbourne and Carlton have put themselves in dangerous territory,impossible to get out of territory? Of course not,but it is fair for one to wonder,and think,where is the leadership going to come from for the young players.
Jack
Roar Pro
Correct Col. Curnow has constantly been compared to Jake Stringer which I disagree with. He's definitely not as explosive or as quick and at his height he won't be a pure key forward. Steve's description of Curnow being a third tall midfielder who can pinch hit in the midfield matches my sentiments exactly. I see him more as a Jack Darling type. He's a good lead up forward but I'm not quite convinced at this stage whether he can develop as a genuine effective midfielder, but there are a few tools to work with. On Weideman, I don't find him to be elite at anything in particular. He has reasonably good skills and a solid mark of the ball. His endurance needs work but I don't hold that against him too much as it can easily be improved upon once he gets into training at an AFL club, but generally I don't see anything that amazes me in Weideman, but rather a good player who is relatively even with most aspects of his game which of course is nothing to scoff at either.
Col from Brissie
Guest
Mattyb, Carlton have openly stated they are starting a rebuild basically from scratch. This was the first draft of that rebuild which could take 4 - 5 years. No one can say that they have failed this draft until the draftees have been given time to develop. I don't know how you take Jack's ladder as anything other than his opinion. I think his comment that he does not think himself as knowledgable as professional recruiters says it all really.
mattyb
Guest
Excellent article and I read with great interest. The points I took from the draft and also trade week was that Brisbane and St Kilda look to have futures that supporters can look at with optimism,and your little ladder did show they are continuing in that fashion. Melbourne down the bottom also has me thinking we could be in for a bit more of same old same old but surely nothing like a couple of years ago. Carlton,they are in big trouble,from your calculations their drafting could prove to be yet another failure.On top of that,their list has got to the point that there is very little talent to teach the draft picks much about football even if they have got it right.Failure breeds failure and Melbourne and Carlton have both got to a stage where they might find it hard to recover.
Steve
Guest
Excellent pick up for us Macca. Glass McCasker I mean.
Steve
Guest
Yeah I agree Macca, Gibbs is prime candidate for trade bait next season. We need to get at least two at a minimum, preferably three first rounders again for next years national draft to really keep the momentum of the rebuild moving forwards. Not sure who else could be trade bait, Kruezer might be a possibility also, even Casboult as well.
Macca
Guest
Just a theory Col - hopefully Jack might shed some light soon.
Macca
Guest
Steve - I agree I think the blues have done a great job this year and I am confident Curnow will work out (he will have his brother driving him - literally - for a start). I think next year the draft will be all about midfielders for the blues - I think the will back in Jacksh, PLowman & Weitering (plus possibly Glass- McCasker) down back and Casboult, McKay and Curnow up forward and try to get some premium mid's. I could see them offering up someone like Gibbs to try and get another 1 or 2 first round picks as well.
Steve
Guest
I'm happy with what the Blues have done through the trade periods and the drafts. Cunningham was the surprise pick for mine, I don't think many people saw that one coming at all, but it makes sense to me. I really want to see all our picks get games into them over the course of the season. For mine the most important part of the rebuild comes at the end of next season, through the trade period and next years draft. Only then I believe can anyone make a fair and true assessment of where we are heading. I think what we do in the next trade and draft period will be the only we can judge our success this year. Just my opinion though.
Macca
Guest
If that is right Steve then using pick 12 on that sort of player is probably a bit high, I think the blues will be hoping he becomes more of a Roughead type.
Steve
Guest
Macca, I see Curnow more as the third tall forward option who can pinch hit in the midfield than as an out and out midfielder.
Col from Brissie
Guest
Could well have been Macca, just as their must have been concerns regarding Burtons ability after a terrible injury, yet Jack still ranked him at 8.
Macca
Guest
I agree they are interesting selections but weren't there some questions over Weideman's endurance?
Col from Brissie
Guest
Interesting that you have Curnow at 19 when most experts had him in the top 10 and some even in top 5. Also interesting that you have Weideman at 20 when he was regarded as the best key position forward of the draft. Would be interesting to know your reasons for the ranking you gave them.
Macca
Guest
It is definitely a concept worth pursuing but it would be interesting if you could somehow factor in club need - maybe categorising the players into positions or ranking what you see as the clubs greatest need and assigning a value to how they met it - I realise it gets a lot more complicated but it be very interesting if it could be achieved.