THE GIANTS should be given further incentives to develop local academy products in western Sydney ahead of accessing talent from their rich Riverina region, according to Adelaide recruiting boss Hamish Ogilvie.
Greater Western Sydney is set for another batch of academy recruits at this year's NAB AFL Draft, with Will Setterfield, Harry Perryman and Harrison Macreadie all possible first-round selections.
Those three, as well as fellow academy prospects Kobe Mutch and Zac Sproule, have developed out of the Riverina area, which many clubs believe should be stripped back from GWS.
All four of the club's academy selections at last year's draft (including three first-round picks) also hailed from the Riverina zone, with another group of talented players on the horizon for the 2017 intake.
Ogilvie, who has headed the Crows' recruiting team since 2012, said the Giants should be encouraged more to produce players from Blacktown and surrounding areas instead of other parts of their vast zone.
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"Clearly [the academy zone is] going to continue to be reviewed and that should happen and that needs to happen. They're a new club and things are evolving very quickly. Did we think they were going to be strong? Yeah, we always did. And are they? Yeah, they are and they're probably getting a bit better," Ogilvie told AFL.com.au's Road to the Draft podcast.
"The metropolitan western Sydney one is interesting. They're doing a lot of work out there and I think maybe if they can produce some players from western Sydney perhaps they should get even greater concessions for those guys.
"It's not an area that's produced many players so maybe that's an area we can focus on as an industry and help the Giants in western Sydney produce some players from their heartland."
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Hawthorn list manager Graham Wright last month described GWS's zone as "overkill" and called on it to be restricted to western Sydney and Canberra.
By doing that, the Giants would lose access to players from traditional football areas such as Albury and Mildura.
The club presently has access to a number of prospects who play for the Murray Bushrangers and Bendigo Pioneers in Victoria's TAC Cup competition, a privilege that Wright suggested should end.
Ogilvie supported Wright's take – "That's not a club view, that's just my personal opinion," he said – but added if the Giants could develop a player good enough to be drafted from the western Sydney region, they should get a draft bonus and be able to add them to a list automatically using a third or fourth-round pick.
"The old father-son rule where we used to be able to take a father-son with a third-rounder…Maybe the commission could look at something like that [for players from western Sydney]," he said.
The AFL is also continuing to investigate a way to introduce trading to draft night, which already took on a new dimension last year when the new father-son and academy bidding system was implemented.
Ogilvie sees merit in swapping picks during the night to jump up the draft order at different stages of the event, but suggested it would be challenging to move players.
"I struggle to get my head around how you would trade players on the night because of medicals, and talking to the player, and the club you're going to trade him to talking to the player. That would be difficult. At this stage, without having spent a lot of time as a group working on it, I think it can only be picks," he said.
The Crows completed a trade in the 2014 exchange period that saw them give up pick 10 and 47 for Geelong's pick 14 and 35. The Cats swooped on Nakia Cockatoo at their first choice six weeks later, while the Crows grabbed key defender Jake Lever.
Ogilvie pointed to that deal as an example of how in-draft trading could work for clubs.
"The NFL have hundreds of picks [in the draft] and it gives you more scope to move and more wiggle room. Whether we have enough picks [in our game] to make it a really viable and exciting thing for TV, I'm not sure," he said.
"Obviously there'd have to be a time limit, but the Cockatoo-Lever one is a bit of a test case for that happening."
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