Early draft selections have been a rarity since Adrian Dodoro joined Essendon Football Club as recruiting manager in 1998. In his first year he had four selections inside the top 25. He drafted Mark McVeigh, Adam Ramanauskas, Chris Ladhams, Aaron Henneman and Danny Jacobs that year. Since then team success and salary cap penalties have seen Dodoro and his recruiting team searching far and wide to find talent still available late in the draft. This season he finally gets another crack at some talent early in the draft with Essendon having selection 12, 13, 29, 30 and 44.

“We haven’t had a lot of early selections but we have done okay despite that. We have also worked the rookie list pretty well to find the likes of Cory McGrath and Damien Peverill recently,” Dodoro said. “It’s a good to get into a draft early because I don’t think it is that deep – so you want to grab players early and we will have the opportunity to do that this year.”

Dodoro said the recruiting staff and match committee were still working through the talent pool and assessing which way they would go with the early selections. “Obviously we will be having a close look at the ruck situation and I think we will also be looking at boosting the midfield stocks,” Dodoro said. “We have already got a couple of handy players in Adam McPhee and Damian Cupido and Jobe Watson as a third round draft pick under the father-son rule is a real bonus.”

All members of the Essendon coaching panel are spending much of their days watching video after video of the young talent on offer - searching for a sign that a player has what it takes to make it at the top level. On November 24th we will find out exactly who it was that impressed the Essendon football department.