‘Best available ‘will be the mantra of Recruiting Manager Simon Dalrymple and his team when their time to read out names comes at Thursday’s NAB AFL Draft on the Gold Coast.
While the Bulldogs enter the draft without a top ten pick for the first time in two years, hitting the mark with the Club’s five live picks inside 50 is just as crucial.
With some key needs addressed through the recent NAB AFL Trade Period – namely a key forward and defenders - a focus on drafting players seen to have the best chance of forging AFL careers is the overwhelming determinant as to whose names will be read out by Dalrymple on Thursday night.
“We need to keep attracting good players, we can’t afford to miss,” Dalrymple told BulldogsTV.
“We’ll be looking at each pick that we have, getting the best player possible, with the best possible chance of being a successful AFL player.”
Key position players dominated the off-season player movement for the Bulldogs, with power forward and last year’s top draft pick Tom Boyd now calling the Kennel home, along with key defenders Joel Hamling (Geelong) and Zaine Cordy (father-son), and running half-back Shane Biggs.
With the Club’s first selection in the draft coming at No. 26, the recruiters’ focus has narrowed to those they believe most likely to be available around that mark.
Dalrymple says they have not been wasting time focusing on prospects likely to come off the board in the first handful of picks.
“We try to be efficient with our times, and try to solve the issues that you think will be the decisions you need to make [draft night],” Dalrymple said.
“The boys right at the top end we’ve stopped doing work on them, but there are a number that might slide through to our picks so we need to make sure we cover all bases there.
“That’s always a challenge in terms of reading the play and who might slide through, as well as looking at getting our order in terms of how we rank the players.”
The Western Bulldogs will take five live picks into Thursday night’s event at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, holding picks No. 26, 27, 39, 45 and 46.
Pick No. 62 has been committed to father-son selection Cordy.
