SYDNEY is not yet settled on who it wants to take at pick No.3 at this year's NAB AFL Draft, with "five or six" players still in the mix for the prized spot.
Putting the matched Academy bid for Callum Mills aside (he was pick No.3 in 2015), it will be the Swans' earliest draft pick since 1998, when Nic Fosdike joined Sydney at pick No.3.
The Swans have been linked to one of the talls available – Logan McDonald, Riley Thilthorpe or Denver Grainger-Barras – but the club is also considering midfielders for the selection.
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The club's general manager of recruiting and list strategy Kinnear Beatson told the Road to the Draft podcast that they were "pretty settled" on who they would like to add to the Swans' list but hadn't fully decided.
"Not completely, no. There's still a little bit of work on-going with that, and (recruiting manager) Simon Dalrymple has been running with that mainly while I've had my head in the Free Agency and Trade Period scenarios," Beatson said.
"We've got a Zoom catch-up with the coaches on Monday morning to take them through the five to six players we've got a serious interest in at No.3."
Beatson said the Swans' need for young talls would not be the overriding factor in who they choose.
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"It will be the best player. Having said that, there are four really good talls at the pointy end of the draft, that's including Jamarra (Ugle-Hagan), but you would think it's a given the Bulldogs would match that bid wherever that comes.
"He's an exceptional talent and clearly No.1 in our eyes. But apart from the three talls, there's also Elijah Hollands and Tanner Bruhn."
Vic Metro's midfielder Will Phillips is another player likely to come into consideration for the Swans' pick, as Beatson said the club weighed up the medical notes on their options.
"The difficulty when we're assessing those players is Elijah's coming off a knee reco so we have to have some serious discussions about that and how his rehab's going and where he's up to, and Tanner we haven't seen much," he said.
"He played three NAB League games last year, a few school games, missed the pre-season games that Geelong played because he had some minor surgery on his knee. But it's a difficult call. But on the vision and under-16s vision that we've got, he's a pretty good player young Tanner.
"It's taking a little bit of time for the medical team to work through the medical reports. Not that we think there's any big surprises there, but there's a bit of work to do on Riley's OP or pubic stress, whatever it is, and we're still chasing up a few little details on the psych information.
"But I couldn't see any of those reports altering it too significantly at this point in time."
The Swans say they will likely bid on Ugle-Hagan if he is still on the board at No.3, while they are expecting a bid to come for their Academy player Braeden Campbell in the first 10-12 picks.
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A bid for fellow Swans Academy midfielder Errol Gulden may come between picks No.20-30.
