ANOTHER YEAR OF DRAFTING DANGEROUSLY – PART TWO

SWIFT FLOWS THE DRAFT - THE WILD CARDS

It was a little over 19 months ago that Tom Swift was sitting on top of the world. The young Western Australian was already making a name for himself as an elite junior footballer after starring in the previous year's national carnival for under 16 players. Then disaster struck.

A member of the AIS-AFL academy squad about to embark on a tour of South Africa, Swift was the youngest of five team leaders of the touring group, the others being Trent Cotchin, Brad Ebert, Jack Grimes and Brendan Whitecross. Before the touring side left the country it assembled in Perth where it played an exhibition match on 7 April 2007 against WAFL team Perth at Subiaco Oval as a curtain raiser to the round 3 West Coast-Collingwood AFL match. Swift started the game well but late in the first quarter he landed awkwardly on his left leg which buckled at the knee and his ACL snapped. The injury put him out of football for 12 months but that wasn't the end of his troubles. An injury to the right knee which, while not as serious, managed to curtail most of his 2008 season.

In the interim, Swift saw two of his WA team mates and fellow academy members Nick Naitanui and Daniel Rich play in two national under 18 carnivals, achieve All Australian honours and championship medallions, ease themselves into senior football playing in WAFL grand finals (in Rich's case he has two premiership medallions with Subiaco) and assume favouritism for early selection with their own local AFL clubs for this month's national draft.

Swift's name however, was not entirely forgotten by AFL recruiters despite the limited number of appearances on the football field. Last month he made it to the national draft camp in Canberra where he excelled in a number of tests and he is now back on the draft radar with a vengeance. There are strong indications that he will go somewhere in the top twenty and, since I'm a real stickler for an omen bet, the clincher for me was the win at Rose Hill last Saturday by the Gai Waterhouse trained Swift Alliance (@$1.40), his second win from as many starts!

The Tom Swift story highlights the quirkiness of the field for this month's national draft. He is one of a handful of hopefuls who are true draft wild cards - capable of being picked very early but also possible drifters who could fall to late in the first round or beyond. The other "wild cards" are Phil Davis, Stephen Hill, Steele Sidebottom, Jackson Trengove and Chris Yarran. Ayce Cordy, a 202cm ruckman from the Geelong Falcons who spent most of 2008 on the sidelines with injury would have been on the list but has been snapped up as a father-son selection by the Bulldogs.

Phil Davis from St Peters College in Adelaide is tall (193cm), athletic and capable of playing in virtually any key position on the ground but like Swift, played very little football this year. Davis suffered a shoulder injury early in the season, came back and played and was selected for the South Australian Under 18 side but a recurrence of the injury meant surgery on the shoulder and an end to his season. The Crows have been keeping tabs on Davis for some time and his talent has not gone unnoticed in several other quarters. He is a real dark horse for selection in the first round of the national draft.

Stephen Hill was one of WA's stand out players in the national carnival as a half back flanker/wingman with the ability to play in the middle. He was selected in the All-Australian team but most ranked him well below fellow Sandgropers in Rich, Naitanui and Chris Yarran. However, his star rose to great heights after draft camp testing revealed the extent of his sheer pace and agility. Suddenly the draft camp record breaker (2.77 in the 0m sprint) appeared in great demand with an article in the West Australian newspaper indicating that Fremantle might consider him ahead of Rich at #3 while another newspaper report suggested he was a good chance to go at 5 to Essendon.

Steele Sidebottom had a consistent year with the premiership winning Murray Bushrangers and the Victorian Country team in national championships. He won All-Australian honours and capped his year off with an excellent TAC Cup finals series and a sensational 32 possessions and 10 goals in the grand final. On that basis, he should have been considered a certainty for top 10 selection. A clever player whose skills are good on both sides, has great endurance and a quick thinker, Sidebottom's draft camp speed tests were however, not to the liking of many observers and suddenly (and inexplicably to some people) his draft stocks have fallen somewhat. The draft camp seems to have had the reverse effect on Sidebottom's prospects to those of Hill but he's a true footballer and I still expect him to be taken in the top ten or very close to that mark.

Twelve months ago Jackson Trengove was one of the stars of the Calder Cannons premiership side. He had just completed an outstanding finals series and, but for the fact that he was ineligible because of his young age might well have been selected in the top 10 last November. Flash forward another six months and Trengove was on track for a top 5 draft berth after gaining selection as a ruckman/forward for Victoria Metro for the Under 18 championships. After playing the first game of the series, his hamstring tore so badly off the bone in a training mishap that he required surgery in June. The injury took its time healing (there was a follow up operation in July) and it was only recently that he was given a positive medical report suggesting he was healing well enough for him to come into high draft calculations again.

Chris Yarran is an enigma but not for reasons of injury but rather because there are some that question his attitude and his application to the game. Yarran has been a stand out in the WAFL runner up team Swan Districts alongside Naitanui and another young up and comer in Clancee Pearce. He kicks the impossible goal and has been compared with Port Power's Shaun Burgoyne but the doubters have cast a slight pall over his draft prospects. He'll certainly be taken but perhaps not as early as we might have thought earlier in the year.

This group of players whose draft destinations are unknown and slightly problematic is indicative of why this draft is so unpredictable. At one stage or another they might have been considered early selections or possibilities to go in the range of the Demons' second round selections at 17 and 19. One or two still might be there but quite a few of them will be selected well before Melbourne's Barry Prendergast calls out his second selection of the draft meeting.

Last year, some observers were successful in calling most of the top ten selections in advance. Thanks to this year's wild cards, that prospect is highly unlikely in 2008.