HAWTHORN Recruiting and List Manager Graham Wright says the Hawks will take the best available player with its picks in tonight’s National Draft on the Gold Coast.
The Hawks hold three live selections, numbers 24, 38 and 56 before officially upgrading rookies Will Langford and Jonathon Ceglar to the senior list with picks 59 and 71.
Wright, who has been commended in recent years for his ability to pluck quality players without holding top 10 selections will aim to do the same tonight.
The approach the Club will take is to select the next best available player rather than focusing on specific club needs.
“We’ll pick the best player at pick 24,” Wright told hawthornfc.com.au
“We’re a little bit unsure what will be there when we have our selection but at this stage, best player available.”
In recent years Wright, along with his recruiting team that includes five full-time and a number of part-time staff have picked premiership players Isaac Smith (selection 19), Bradley Hill (selection 33), Ben Stratton (selection 46), Paul Puopolo (selection 66) and Luke Breust in the rookie draft.
To be able to identify such talent takes a year of hard work watching footage, gathering information from the draft combine and through pre-draft interviews.
Then, the recruiters collaborate and aim to predict the players other clubs might select to gauge who will be available at 24, 38 and 56.
“It has been a long process, the whole year is basically about viewing and making sure we’ve got a good handle on all the players and then interviewing them to make sure we know them really well,” Wright explained.
“We get all their testing results, all their reports and those sorts of things and put that all together to come up with an order.
“We’re pretty comfortable where it sits now.”
With the Club’s final live selection at number 56, Wright believes it might be hard pressed to pick diamond in the rough due to the depth of this year’s talent.
“It’s probably an average draft, and by average I don’t mean bad but more an average group of players we’ve seen that isn’t short on talent but certainly not high either,” he said.
There are many unexpected turns on draft night, with clubs passing on talented players for various reasons.
Consequently, players clubs believe will be taken by their selection might still be available.
Wright says those scenarios are dealt with in his team’s pre-draft preparation but there are always surprises.
“In general, we’ve done all of our ‘what ifs’, so we understand what may or may not happen at each pick but if someone does slip through that you haven’t expected, then it’s up to us to try and work out whether we’ll pick that player before the other guys we have on our list,” he said.
“Generally we will because they’re a more talented player than the ones we are considering at that particular pick.”
