How Tigers, past and present, will shape the top of the AFL draft

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The Age’s in-depth coverage of the next generation of football stars, ahead of this year’s AFL national draft at Marvel Stadium.

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A tangled web of Richmond connections could determine where the bids fall for the most talented batch of northern academy prospects ever in this week’s AFL draft.

Zeke Uwland, fellow Suns academy graduate Dylan Patterson and Brisbane’s Daniel Annable are widely tipped to attract opposition bids in the first six selections on Wednesday night, which the clubs they are tied to are certain to match.

Zeke Uwland will end up at Gold Coast in the AFL draft, but it’s likely another club may make a bid on him beforehand.

Carlton’s highly promising father-son defender Harry Dean is also in that mix as the Blues prepare to offload their No.9 and No.11 selections to Essendon and North Melbourne, respectively.

Those potential deals, which cannot be completed until draft night, will enable Carlton to not only match a bid on Dean but also next-generation academy prospect Jack Ison, whose range starts in the late teens. Any Bombers trade would involve them sending picks 21, 27 and 30 to the Blues for nine, plus possibly 43 and 54.

Those late selections would give Essendon the option to match bids on next-generation academy prospects Adam Sweid and Hussien El Achkar, but a deal has not been signed off on yet.

The Kangaroos would part with their No.25 choice for the 11th pick, and donate to the Cody Walker fund – Carlton’s star father-son midfielder next year – with their future second-rounder as the key plank of any trade.

There are connections aplenty among officials at the top of the draft. West Coast and Richmond own the first four picks between them, and Eagles’ list boss Matt Clarke previously served as the Tigers’ recruiting manager, while Gold Coast’s new football manager Craig Cameron was once in the same role at Punt Road.

The Blues’ list manager Nick Austin also worked in recruiting at the Tigers for 6½ years, at the same time as Clarke, who reported to Cameron in his first football job at Melbourne.

Another potential factor to consider is that West Coast and the Lions had extensive dealings during the player movement period. Brisbane traded Brandon Starcevich to the Eagles to avoid diluting their free agency compensation after ex-West Coast co-captain Oscar Allen chose to sign with the back-to-back reigning premiers.

That meant the Eagles, who are set to select Willem Duursma at No.1 after finishing on the bottom of the ladder, also retained pick two as compensation for losing Allen.

Willem Duursma is the hot favourite to be the No.1 selection.

Clubs typically don’t bid on academy or father-son players out of spite or to force a rival to pay maximum price, but Richmond have stated publicly and privately that they are willing to make multiple bids. There is a possibility that Essendon, with the fifth live pick, might need to make one bid on that top group.

The league has tightened bid-matching rules this year, slashing the discount from 20 per cent to 10 and changing the points value of picks to also make it harder.

The process will be tougher again next year, including the discount likely being reduced or potentially wiped, clubs being able to use a maximum of two picks to match a bid, and ladder position restricting access.

Uwland, Patterson and Annable all offered anecdotal evidence of changes they had noticed as a result of the success of the northern academies, while the AFL’s participation figures for Queensland (13 per cent increase), New South Wales and the ACT (10 per cent) continue to spike.

More than a quarter of all Australian rules football participants this year are from those states and the ACT.

“I understand where they’re [the critics] coming from, but it’s not every year that we’re going to have five prospects available,” Uwland told this masthead.

“You’ve got to understand that the talent ebbs and flows, and you can’t over-adjust for one anomaly of a year. The academies play a pivotal role in the development of kids, so to strip the academies of their advantages would destroy AFL up in Queensland and NSW, and I think that’s something we can’t afford.”

This year’s strong crop comes two years after Gold Coast matched four first-round bids on academy players, including Jed Walter. They also have Jai Murray, Beau Addinsall and Koby Coulson as possible top-40 picks.

Hussien El Achkar (left) and Adam Sweid are part of Essendon’s next-generation academy.

Patterson was originally in Brisbane’s academy, but relocated to the Gold Coast to live, in a boon for the Suns. Having a professional training program for Patterson to develop in made it easier for him to reject NRL contract offers from the likes of the Brisbane Broncos, Dolphins and Gold Coast Titans.

“People just have one point of view because they see so many players getting picked up,” Patterson said.

“They don’t see how hard it is for them to actually maintain those players. A few years ago, players were moving from Queensland to Melbourne to play better footy … [but] now it might be just as good to stay on the Gold Coast

“People think the Suns are getting a bit of a lottery, but they don’t realise what it’s like. If Noah Anderson or Matt Rowell go out on the Gold Coast, 85 per cent of people don’t know who they are. There’s still a long way to go in the development process.”

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