Draft pick and mix
This article originally appeared at This Week In Football.
Draft picks are one of the primary resources available to an AFL club – maximising them can lead to dynasties, whiffing on them can leave a club in a very dark place.
Our first chart looks at each top 10 pick from the last 10 drafts. It’s organised by how many years into their career a player has reached – so the first column has the first year output of every top 10 pick, while the last column has the outputs in years 8-10 for the 30 players selected in 2014, 15, and 16 (being the only ones in the system long enough to have had an 8th, 9th, or 10th year).
We can see a couple of things immediately:
Of the 100 players drafted in the top 10 since 2015 all but 4 were still in the system by their 8th year. The exceptions being Fisher McAsey drafted by Kuwarna, Sam Petrevski-Seton and Lochie O’Brien by Carlton, and Jaidyn Stephenson by Collingwood.
They’re generally still at their original drafted clubs, the main exception being the older group of Suns and Giants like Callum Ah-Chee, Jack Bowes, Izak Rankine, Jack Scrimshaw, Jacob Hopper, Tim Taranto, and Will Setterfield.
There’s a fair bit of variance in how many games first year top 10 picks get, but most clubs range around the 50-75% of possible games played.
As you’d expect, a small proportion of those games are rated elite. The impact of Connor Rozee and Nick Daicos here is amplified by Collingwood and Yartapuulti only having taken 1 other top 10 pick between them in the last decade (although the other, Jaidyn Stephenson, had three elite rated first-year games – as many as Nick and one more than Connor)
As they move forward in their career the proportion of games played and proportion of elite games played lifts – both as players settle into their career, and at the risk of putting things too harshly the average stops getting dragged down by players who weren’t making it and have left the club.
Gold Coast has taken 16 top 10 picks in the last decade – literally breaking the axis of my chart.
North are the only team to have lost a top 10 selected player after only 1 year – Jason Horne-Francis. If we look to players leaving after two years we also pick up Josh Schache from Brisbane, Jack Scrimshaw from Gold Coast, and Will Setterfield from the Giants.
Josh Gibcus’ injury struggles are clearly visible on Richmond’s chart.
Now the top 10 isn’t the whole of the draft so here’s something for the real sickos. I have attempted to chart every club’s entire draft haul over the last decade, from the top of the national draft through to mid-season drafts, supplementary picks, even the Essendon top-ups.
There are a couple of bugs I know about but haven’t had the time to iron out yet – Marty Hore (Narrm), Matt Carroll (Carlton), and Derek Eggmolesse-Smith (Richmond) hold the distinction of being drafted by the same club twice. In Marty Hore’s case it wasn’t even a case of shuffling the rookie list as he spent time delisted inbetweeen. They each appear twice on their team charts.
The other requires an apology to Sam Fisher, not the Euro-Yroke player, but the one who spent one year on Sydney’s list in 2017. For whatever reason he kept breaking Sydney’s chart every time I tried to render it so I’ve expunged him from the records. Sorry Sam.
Beyond that, have a look – it’s broken down into categories of draft picks and shows games played at the club or subsequent clubs, as well as highlighting elite rated games.
If you want to engage with me or tell me I’ve got something horrendously wrong, the best place to do so is over on BlueSky.
