The built-from-scratch draft simulator helping the Suns pull off player recruitment coups
Player recruitment in the AFL is all about strategy. But one club is doing it bigger and better than the rest, thanks to a recruiter’s built-from-scratch draft simulator keeping them ahead of the game.
Gold Coast’s historic five-player Suns Academy haul was the end result of two years of meticulous planning, 17 trades and a built-from-scratch draft simulator that meant the club was always one step ahead from the moment West Coast was on the clock at pick one of the national draft.
In the end just five Draft Value Index (DVI) points were the difference between ultimate success and failure as the Suns pulled the trigger on their “one per cent play” in a flawless execution of a draft and trade strategy dating back to 2023.
Knowing there were a stack of changes to the bidding system in the pipeline that would make repeating their 2023 draft success much harder, Gold Coast began mapping out how it could possibly add Zeke Uwland, Dylan Patterson, Jai Murray, Beau Addinsall and Koby Coulson.
Melbourne father-son rookie draftee Kalani White was also in the club’s consideration at the time off the back of a standout U16 National Championships and remained so up until he chose the Demons over the Suns earlier this year.
Gold Coast knew from a long way out that the 2025 draft would be heavily influenced by northern academy, father-son and next generation academy players and that informed much of its strategy over the two years leading into the night of November 19.
That meant making tough calls on senior players starting with Jack Lukosius who was shipped to Port Adelaide in the 2024 trade period for the Power’s 2025 first round pick.
As part of that same three-team trade Gold Coast acquired Collingwood’s 2025 first rounder alongside defender John Noble, with the Suns’ 2024 first going to the Magpies and other later picks changing hands.
The Suns also executed pick swaps with Brisbane and Richmond, trading 2024 draft capital for 2025 selections.
This year Ben Ainsworth, Sam Flanders, Brayden Fiorini, Connor Budarick and Malcolm Rosas were all traded for selections that would ultimately form the backbone of the Suns’ 2025 draft hand.
During that same trade period the Suns agreed to pick swaps with the Crows, Power and Giants – sending a slew of 2026 selections in exchange for 2025 draft capital – and in the days prior to the draft shook hands with the Bulldogs on a fourth pick swap.
Those deals were then ratified on draft night.
In total 17 trades were executed over the two years with Gold Coast deliberately moving capital from 2024 and 2026 into 2025.
By the end of the draft, the Suns’ cupboard was empty. They owned only Richmond’s future fifth round pick in 2026. But they had gotten the six players they set out to draft.
So how did they do it?
Given the staggering amount of moving pieces that would be involved in matching bids on as many as five academy-tied players, in a live draft where things can change in an instant, recruitment boss – and now head of list management and recruiting – Kall Burns armed himself with the most important tool in his arsenal.
With the help of his recruiting team in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, Burns was able to free himself up from some of the scouting and analysis this year to build the draft simulator that became the Suns’ secret to success.
Burns taught himself how to code and created the program from scratch that allowed the Suns to run numerous pre-draft simulations taking in every possible scenario.
And during the draft every player and pick that went off the board was plugged into that software to give the Suns an updated state of play so that they were always one step ahead – without the need to run the multitude of manual calculations that were necessary in 2023.
It was using that software that the draft night trade with the Bulldogs was realised.
On face value, the Suns actually lost DVI points when they sent picks 15 and 29 in exchange for 14, 33 and 53. However, knowing that 33 and 53 would move up in the draft order once father-son and academy bids were matched, they actually gained a further 170 points in the trade.
Without that software spitting out real-time information and validating the club’s every decision, it would have not been possible for the Suns to have achieved what they did in the draft.
West Coast was shocked when Gold Coast chose to match its bid on Addinsall at pick 18 after doing the exact same thing only minutes earlier when the Eagles called Murray’s name.
Rival clubs not clued into the Suns’ ultimate strategy were convinced there was no way they could successfully match bids on all five of their academy-tied players and yet by the end of night two, Gold Coast had not only achieved that feat but also added Tasmanian defender Avery Thomas.
Thomas was labelled internally as the Suns’ “one per cent play” – the player outside of their academy pool who, if the stars aligned and he was available while the club still had the means to match a bid on Coulson, it would pull the trigger.
And thus when Carlton went on the clock at pick 28, Burns picked up the phone and made the call.
In pre-draft conversations with the Blues the Suns knew they were in the market for 2026 draft capital to help match a bid on father-son starlet Cody Walker.
The two clubs quickly reached an agreement and the Suns suddenly were back in the hot seat.
As Coulson watched on from his family home on the Gold Coast – flanked by Uwland, Murray and Addinsall who had all flown back after they were drafted the previous day – he thought perhaps the Suns were trading up to draft him.
Tasmanian Avery Thomas is off to the Suns! ☀ï¸@Telstra | #AFLDraftpic.twitter.com/dooJwQ2ZYk
— AFL (@AFL) November 20, 2025
The Suns add a FIFTH Academy product in Koby Coulson 🙌@Telstra | #AFLDraftpic.twitter.com/bxgr7IAbxs
— AFL (@AFL) November 20, 2025
Instead they called Thomas’ name – and although that made Coulson nervous, he need not have been. Because the Suns had run the numbers through the simulator and knew if the midfielder’s name was called next at pick 29 they still had the draft capital to match.
If a bid came at 29 for Coulson the Suns needed 431 DVI points to match and they had 436 to play with. Those measly five spare points were even less than the difference between picks 53 and 54 – the final two selections with value attached to them.
Put simply, the Suns’ draft success played out in the finest of possible margins.
After two years and the aggregation of three drafts’ worth of picks, the end result was a six-player haul that the Suns believe will arm them for a long term shot at premiership success.
Trading for Christian Petracca and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan was with an eye to contending in 2026; moving on quality players to draft six young guns was to keep the Suns in the premiership window for the foreseeable future.
Originally published as The built-from-scratch draft simulator helping the Suns pull off player recruitment coups
AFL world rocked as legend walks away
