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The AFL is more than prone to its share of hyperbole, particularly when it comes to young talent and the difference it can make to a team’s fortunes.
So when various club recruiters and those who make junior football their business started talking about a 2018 “Superdraft” more than a year before it was scheduled to even take place, it was hard not to be cynical.
History may still prove the talent judges wrong, too. But even with just three rounds of AFL football played since those two evenings in mid-November last year, the claim is already looking sustainable.
We’ve seen some pretty impressive starts to AFL careers in the modern era, but have we seen as many eye-catching first steps in one hit as we’ve witnessed already this season?
Sam Walsh, Carlton’s No.1 pick in the draft, was widely tipped to make a seamless transition from under 18 star to established AFL player.
But the ease with which he has already become one of the Blues’ key midfielders has taken aback even some of his biggest supporters. After three games Walsh is averaging 25.6 disposals – second only to Patrick Cripps at the club – and is also ranked third for contested ball and second for uncontested possession.
Sydney’s Nick Blakey had very big raps on him prior to his debut for Sydney, but has often looked the man most likely for the Swans up forward Lance Franklin, having managed a goal per game.
Speaking of which, Port Adelaide’s Connor Rozee has seven already, including a bag of five last weekend against Brisbane, winning the round three Rising Star nomination and becoming, at 19 and two months, the youngest Power player to kick that many goals, currently equal seventh on the AFL goalkicking table.
Two of Rozee’s teammates, Zak Butters and Xavier Duursma, are both averaging just on 19 disposals thus far, and both bobbed up at opportune moments in Port’s first round win over Melbourne at the MCG, their youthful enthusiasm a key to a quicker, fresher-looking Power.
And Geelong defender Jordan Clark has simply oozed composure and aerial ability in defence for the Cats, his judgement even at the higher level impeccable, and proving a source of rebound as well as defence. The 18-year-old is ranked second at GMHBA Stadium thus far for rebound 50s.
All have looked entirely comfortable at the level and capable of playing full AFL seasons despite their tender years and only one senior pre-season under their belts. And it’s a trend we’re likely to see more of, the kids coming out of the under 18 state competitions looking increasingly well-prepared.
The numbers reflect it, too, the immediate AFL fortunes of top 10 draftees over the past decade an interesting guide.
The struggles of Jack Watts, formerly of Melbourne, now of Port Adelaide, to adapt to the AFL spotlight have been well-documented over the years after he was the No.1 pick in the 2008 national draft.
But Watts, who played just three games for the Demons in his first season, was far from the only talented kid of his crop who took plenty of time to find their feet in the big league.
The top 10 that year contained names such as Nic Naitanui, Stephen Hill, Michael Hurley, Jack Ziebell and Phil Davis. But Hill and Brisbane’s Daniel Rich, who would go on to win the 2009 Rising Star award, were the only ones who played more than 11 senior games in their debut seasons, the top 10 playing a combined 105 games between them.
In most seasons since, that figure has tended to hover somewhere between 120-130, though there’s been a couple where the tally was significantly lower, the average over the journey around 114 games.
But after the top 10 in the 2016 draft played a total of 115 games in 2017, that figure last year spiked significantly.
The top 10 of the 2017 draft, in order Brisbane’s Cam Rayner, Andrew Brayshaw (Fremantle), Paddy Dow (Carlton), Luke Davies-Uniacke (North Melbourne), Adam Cerra (Fremantle), Jaidyn Stephenson (Collingwood), Hunter Clark and Nick Coffield (both St Kilda), Aaron Naughton (Western Bulldogs) and Lochie O’Brien (Carlton), between them compiled 174 games last year.
Stephenson, last year’s Rising Star winner, not only played every home and away game for the Magpies, but four finals, including a grand final in which he kicked two goals, for a total of 26 games, still looking as fresh at the end as the start.
Rayner played all 22 games for Brisbane and Cerra missed only one game for the Dockers. Cerra’s teammate Brayshaw would have played 20 had his jaw not been broken late in the season, and Dow and O’Brien played 20 and 18 respectively for Carlton.
Naughton, who held down a key defensive post for the Bulldogs all year at the age of 18, not only won the club’s best first year player, but finished fourth in the best and fairest. So far in 2019, he’s made a very smooth transition to the forward line, where he booted three goals in the first-up win over Sydney.
The under-18 competition from which most of the draftees emerge continues to expedite the development of the junior prodigies, and not only in a physical sense.
On Footyology this week, Sam Bunn reported on the extent to which under 18 clubs now monitor their players’ mental health, the teenagers with access to a club psychologist and counsellor and their support networks and families constantly kept it the loop.
The AFL stars of tomorrow ape the routines of senior players in detail, required to fill in daily an online database recording emotions, sleeping patterns and diet, among other areas, so the club can identify any potential red flags and address them promptly.
That is all in addition to the extensive and technical football coaching which sees them rarely surprised by anything they encounter once they enter the change rooms of whichever AFL club drafts them, and importantly, wherever that club may reside, often far from home.
These kids are more ready to make an immediate mark on the AFL scene than their predecessors were. And as we’re seeing in 2019, many are already doing just that.
In time, the 2018 crop of AFL kids may well be seen as a “Superdraft”. But perhaps, alternately, the ease with which the latest young stars are slotting into the senior game may indeed simply now be the norm.
*Rohan Connolly is one of Australia's foremost sportswriters – a veteran of both broadcast and print media. In the era of sanitised corporate sports media his is a perspective worth exploring. You can read more of Rohan work at FOOTYOLOGY.
