Q – When does the work finish? I spoke to Shane Harvey earlier in the week and he said you spoke to him late on the Saturday night. Were you still talking to players on Sunday morning?
A – It is an interesting process. We tend to steer away from some players and get close to other players for various reasons. Shane for example was one player we didn’t interview. Being a local player – we knew a fair bit about him and I had received a fair bit of information on him, including references. There was no need to get close up to him because we knew what he was about. But because he was a player we had targeted I thought it was a good idea to ring him late on Saturday night to see what other clubs had thought of him. We put it all together and we were pretty sure a few other clubs would have taken him probably one or two picks after ours if we hadn’t taken him at 18. We decided he was the best player available to us.
Q – Just take us through the last six weeks – is it a matter of having a number of contingency plans in place. How does it actually happen?
A – I have a team of dedicated spotters across Australia – we work hard throughout the year to formulate a list of players that we think are good enough to play league footy. Obviously some players have more improvement in them than others, so we try and measure the improvement rates in individuals. The season then finishes – we made the Grand Final this year and we had a big break between the Grand Final and the National Draft. This was terrific because it meant the coaching staff were able to get their teeth into some videos and I was able to explain who we were looking at, who we liked, who we didn’t like. Working closely with the coaching staff is very important because at the end of the day they have to play these kids.
We came away with a mixture of players. We do have contingency plans but I think this year we always intended to pick the best player available at 18 – which we think we did. At pick 31 we picked Joel Reynolds, a kid that we think will be a good player in two years time. That is one good thing about the strength of our club, we are not afraid to draft a player if we think it might take a bit longer. Simon O’Keefe was picked at 34. We were really happy to pick him up because we thought he was the best ruckman in the draft, so we snapped him up which was terrific.
