Loss of key draft picks to haunt Adelaide Crows in Tippett aftermath

ADELAIDE'S worst draft fears have been realised, with the Kurt Tippett salary cap penalties about to hit it like a sledgehammer.

National Championship

ADELAIDE'S worst draft fears have been realised, with the Kurt Tippett salary cap penalties about to hit it like a sledgehammer.

The club's ban from the first and second rounds of this year's national draft is poised to cost it one of the AFL's top eight teenage draft prospects, dealing a massive blow to its rebuilding plan.

The suddenly-untouchables include SA stars James Aish and Matthew Scharenberg.

Draft-hampered Adelaide could not have picked a worse year to bottom out.

If the Crows stay in their current position of 13th, they would have been granted pick six - their highest draft selection ever, beating the No. 7 pick they wasted on Laurence Angwin in 2000.

And they would have been rewarded with one of the draft's top guns - Aish, Scharenberg, likely No. 1 pick Tom Boyd, his fellow Victorians Jack Billings and Josh Kelly and Ben Lennon or WA star Dom Sheed.

Matt Crouch - the younger brother of emerging Adelaide star Brad Crouch - would have been another possibility for coach Brenton Sanderson's side.

But with their first selection not coming until the third round - unless they can somehow vigorously trade their way up - the Crows will be looking at the draft and thinking what might have been.

A rival recruiting scout has warned the fallout from this year's draft, as well as last year when it also lost its first and second-round draft picks, will haunt Adelaide for years.

"And it will be felt the most in three-to-five years when there will suddenly be holes in the list,'' the scout said.

"To lose draft picks is one thing but to lose a top-10 selection, which appears certain, is an incredible blow to the club.''

This year's draft is considered deep but not star-studded.

The guns are in the top 10, particularly the top six, and are headed by so-called once-in-a-generation key forward Boyd, who will be at the centre of a bidding war between clubs.

Norwood's Aish and Glenelg's Scharenberg will be certain top-six selections and could go as high as pick two.

Billings, Kelly, Lennon, Sheed and Crouch are also considered can't-miss products.

Adelaide will also rue losing its second-round draft pick, which right now would have stood at No. 24.

Last year it lost selections 20, which it likely would have used on Glenelg key forward Tim O'Brien, who joined Hawthorn, and 54.

Crows list manager David Noble expressed regret at not being able to zero in on one of this year's most highly-coveted draft aces.

But he said the club would just have to "get on with things''.

"It's disappointing that we don't have a pick early but that's what we've got so we've just got to deal with it,'' Noble said.

"We've conditioned ourselves for a while now to not worry about it and to just make sure our recruiting guys are looking a little bit deeper into the draft to see if we can find something that might just be bubbling along when we have our first pick, whenever that might be.''

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