AFL Draft 2014: Inside the four-hour meeting that will determine St Kilda’s future
DRAFT EXCLUSIVE: IT’S the triple-treat package that St Kilda will unwrap on Thursday as they add a second concrete layer to its strategic list rebuild.
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IT’S the triple-treat package that chief recruiter Tony Elshaug will unwrap on Thursday night as St Kilda adds a second concrete layer to its strategic list rebuild.
The first present was tied with a golden bow on Wednesday, when the Saints eliminated either key forward Paddy McCartin or explosive midfielder Christian Petracca from No.1 pick contention.
They plan to keep the coveted selection a secret until the player is told and are considering building the suspense until draft night.
The shapes and sizes of the second and third gifts — draft picks 21 and 22 — won’t be known until the first 20 selections are called, but Elshaug’s team is ready.
“You go into the draft rock-solid. We take the mantra of no surprises; completely informed decisions,” St Kilda’s chief operating officer Ameet Bains told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“Over the last four years our team has dug up stuff that we’re pretty confident that, when push comes to shove, maybe only one or two other clubs would have had that information.”
With champion Lenny Hayes retiring after a wooden-spoon season, Bains knows the heat is on — from the No.1 pick through to the final rookie selection.
“At the moment particularly, we can’t afford to miss,” he said.
St Kilda delivered its final draft rankings to senior coach Alan Richardson on Thursday, a four-hour presentation, also attended by chief executive Matt Finnis, that catered for every realistic scenario in an unusually even talent pool.
That meeting in Elshaug’s “war room” — a windowless office at the club’s Seaford base, with floor to ceiling whiteboards filled with draft notes — was Richardson’s last formal chance to challenge and chew on the litany of data.
Player documents filled with stats, draft combine results, psychological profiling, personality testing, medical reports and hours of vision were at their fingertips.
Richardson attended the final Petracca and McCartin interviews and is comfortable with who the Saints will pick.
But this was his chance to ask fine-tuning questions: when will draftees be ready for pre-season, why have prospects moved up or down our board and what came out of Tuesday’s final AFL medical screening?
“Is it overkill? Possibly sometimes, but you’re looking for patterns,” Bains says of the intense research.
“It’s when you hear something you hadn’t heard or didn’t expect where you dig deeper.”
Unless the Saints have visited a player and met his family they will not recruit him. Elshaug, Chris Liberatore and Mark Barnard completed four house calls last week.
Recently, another club ruled a player out because his room was too messy.
Bains said Elshaug — a former AFL premiership assistant coach — would have watched “well over” 100 junior and state-league games this year and his team trawled through hours of vision weekly.
“If you’ve got a full weekend you could conceivably watch six or seven games live,” Bains said.
“It’s brutal and wouldn’t occur each week, but you could be at a school game in Melbourne on Friday, fly out that night, be in Adelaide on Saturday and Perth on Sunday.”
Line and development coaches have also been involved, with former Western Bulldogs superboot Lindsay Gilbee pouring over vision of prospects with wonky kicking styles, analysing what can and can’t be fixed.
Last year the Saints got late mail on Jack Billings. In year 10 he had been physically bullied in a school game and took it to heart.
He resolved it by seeking out a boxing coach to build up aggression and competitiveness, a final tick in his favour.
“For us that’s only a trivial thing, but it shows he’s got the drive to get better and even at that age he was thinking professionally,” Bains said.
So, after speaking to about 20 people linked to McCartin and 20 linked to Petracca, watching them train and play more than 30 times and with all their information sprawled across the war room walls, how do they choose?
Do they go the imposing, 194cm target McCartin, whose 2014 form was affected by persisting niggles, or the dynamite Petracca, who, after a near-flawless year, answered the final question being asked of him last month when he ran a 14.12 beep test?
Character is one crucial factor, but it’s about career projection — who they think will retire the bigger star.
“With character, we’re not just talking about if they’re good blokes or not, but whether they’ve got that real drive, resilience and determination,” Bains said.
“If they don’t have that mental strength and mental toughness it makes it difficult to pick them, certainly not at pick one.”
Bains points to Hayes recovering from two ACLs and No.1 pick Nick Riewoldt’s injury-plagued debut year as evidence that all players need to clear mental hurdles at some stage.
The Saints exit Thursday’s draft at No.41.
That selection will give St Kilda seven of the 18 players it intends to select inside the first three rounds from 2013-16, as the Herald Sun revealed last month.
The recruitment plan, which includes an aggressive swing at free agency from 2016, aims to deliver the Saints their second premiership.
But it was the two middle picks (21 and 22) that dominated Thursday’s top-secret talks.
After spending about 45 minutes on the justification of No.1, they whipped through the names they safely know won’t be playing under Richardson next year.
Those included Angus Brayshaw, Peter Wright and Jarrod Pickett, all certain to go between No.1-21.
The Saints traded in pick 21 for Rhys Stanley, believing the player they pick will exceed what the 23-year-old would have delivered if he had not been sent to Geelong.
Blessed with a similar draft position last year, the Saints snaffled a versatile midfield pack in Billings (No. 3), Luke Dunstan (18) and Blake Acres (19) — handy after losing Brendon Goddard and Nick Dal Santo.
Pinching Eli Templeton as a rookie — a player they rated in the 20s — was a bonus justified by his sizzling form pre-injury and contract extension.
“When it got to 18-19 last year the two highest ranked players on our board were Dunstan and Acres. It just happened that the mix was really good,” Bains said.
Thursday is about the combination the first three players will form.
If the Saints go Petracca, some clubs think they will grab 100kg forward Reece McKenzie at 22, wanting to beat Adelaide (pick 35).
“We said (on Thursday) there is a possibility that who we had at 12 or 13 could actually slide all the way through,” Bains said.
“Of the players we rank 1-22 we think there could be eight or nine different players that could be there, there’s just so much conjecture over certain players.
“Do we want three talls? Do we want three midfielders? Do we want a midfielder and two talls, a tall and two midfielders?”
Four sleeps until the package is unwrapped.
WHO THE HERALD SUN THINKS THE SAINTS COULD PICK
Pick 1: Christian Petracca (explosive midfielder) or Paddy McCartin (full-forward)
“Taking pick one is a joy. You get the opportunity to pick the best player in the country … and importantly, we were always happy to keep it.” - Ameet Bains
Pick 21: Alex Neale-Bullen (inside midfielder) or Tom Lamb (utility).
Pick 22: Touk Miller (inside midfielder) or Ed Vickers-Willis (defender)
“We know what we’re going to do with pick one and with that in mind, who are the two other players that we think complement that pick?” - Ameet Bains
Pick 41: Jack Lonie (small forward) or Reece McKenzie (key forward, chance at 22)
“We’ve explored it in the same way, but you can even be a bit more needs-focused and we’re pretty comfortable picking at that mark.” - Ameet Bains
Rookie picks (St Kilda will use four selections and will consider delisted Crows Shaun McKernan and Jared Petrenko, who are training with the Saints).
“We’ve got to get our rookie picks as right as we possibly can. We’re coming from a long way behind if you look at the gap between ourselves and the premier Hawthorn, it’s a massive gap.” - Ameet Bains
Twitter: @SamLandsberger
Originally published as AFL Draft 2014: Inside the four-hour meeting that will determine St Kilda’s future
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