Recruiting managers and around 100 scouts – all of them football fanatics who mainly work in an honorary capacity – devote their weekends to watching players right across Australia. They watch the progress of youngsters that they feel might one day become part of their club.
However, this week the AFL coaches, the football managers and the assistant coaches all take time out from their hectic AFL schedule to look at what the recruiters have been talking about.
They get to see live some of the fellas whose names have been up on the whiteboards of recruiting managers’ offices or that have been mentioned in recruiting meetings, as the clubs start to shape their lists for the future.
Clubs must then make decisions about whether they just take the compulsory three at the National AFL Draft, or whether this is the year to take five or six and really change the way their list looks. It really is a big week as clubs do their future planning.
On Monday night at the hall-of-fame, it occurred to me – when Hawthorn great John Platten was inducted into the hall-of-fame – how long these championships have been relevant to our AFL competition.
It was in the late 1970s when Platten emerged as a dynamic rover, playing for South Australia and it’s now 26 years since the championships began and a procession of players have emerged as potential AFL talent at this level.
The likes of Platten, Stephen Kernahan, Greg Williams and Paul Roos are all players, who in the very early days, showed as 16 and 17-year-olds, that they were destined to play at the highest level.
In the following years, it hasn’t varied from year-to-year, as around 40 players end up progressing through to the AFL. Last year over 40 players were drafted, while 17 were rookie-listed.
As we endeavour to explain to supporters the relevance of this competition, we often look back at just a decade ago, when the 1993 championships were held.
In this case, the championships were held in Adelaide, yet we saw the emergence of Queensland’s Jason Akermanis, the Northern Territory’s Andrew McLeod and Vic Metro’s Shannon Grant. Today they collectively own a Brownlow Medal, three Norm Smith Medals and five premiership medallions.
That carnival also featured the likes of Western Australia’s Peter Bell, Jeff Farmer, Daniel Chick, Darren Gaspar and Shaun McManus, while St Kilda captain Aaron Hamill played for the ACT and Nigel and Matthew Lappin played for Vic Country.
Vic Metro was the winner that year in 1993 and they have a wonderful record in these championships over the past 14 years.
The Brisbane Lions’ Chris Scott, a best-and-fairest winner and dual premiership player, was a member of that Vic Metro side, along with Brad Johnson, now a 200-game player and a dual best-and-fairest winner with the Western Bulldogs. The Kangaroos’ Adam Simpson is another dual premiership player and best-and-fairest winner, who was also a teammate of Scott and Johnson. That’s why everyone focuses on these championships.
And while not everyone that goes on to be an AFL star will necessary star this week, they will show just that little bit of something special that might appeal to a recruiting manager or one of the spotters. It might even be enough for the recruiting manager to call his name out when the draft comes in late November.
