Eleven years on it remains one of the most perplexing questions in AFL draft history ... how did Brodie Grundy slip to #18 in the 2012 draft?

From SANFL club Sturt, he was the first ruck in the All-Australian Under 18 side and according to AFL website draft guru Cal Twomey was widely tipped to be a top five pick.

Now a boom recruit for the 2024 Sydney Swans, Grundy was a teenager filled with trepidation and uncertainty as he travelled to the Gold Coast for the 2012 draft.

He’d had no indication on what might unfold as the GWS Giants, coming off their first season in the AFL, pondered how to best use picks #1-2-3-12-14 in part two of their foundation draft assistance package.

A guest of the AFL, Grundy watched and waited, eventually becoming more than a little anxious as he slid to the penultimate pick in the first round.

There are countless theories on why, but one long-time recruiter offered a telling insight when he said: “You have to look at the rucks in a draft completely different to anyone else. They can generally only play one position, and if you don't quite need one, then you won't take one.”

It’s a fascinating topic that dominates AFL conversation every year, and is only ever judged with any sort of accuracy in hindsight.

The Giants had relied in their first AFL season on 24-year-old ex-Central Districts (SANFL) ruckman Jonathan Giles, who had originally been drafted in 2005 and spent three years at Port Adelaide without getting a game, and 33-year-old former Port player Dean Brogan.

Preferring to load up on key position players, they stuck with Giles and Brogan and took Lachie Whitfield at #1, Jonathan O'Rourke at #2 and Lachie Plowman at #3, before Kristian Jaksch at #12, Aidan Corr at #14, and James Stewart at #27.

Whitfield (209 games) has been a Giants star. Plowman split 145 games between GWS (20) and Carlton (125) before retiring last year, and Irishman Aidan Corr played 98 games in eight years at GWS before 41 games at North.

O’Rourke, who played 21 games at GWS and Hawthorn, and Jaksch, 14 games at GWS and Carlton, fell short of expectations. Likewise Stewart, who played 18 games at GWS and 60 at Essendon before being delisted last October with a year to run on his contract.

The Western Bulldogs were well-served in the ruck at the time by Will Minson, who was #2 in the AFL for hit-outs in 2012 and would win All-Australian selection in 2013, and preferred 189-game utility Jake Stringer (now at Essendon) at #5, and 230-gamer Jack Macrae at #6.

Port, who in 2012 had recruited Hawthorn premiership ruckman Brent Renouf, went with Brownlow Medallist Ollie Wines at #7, Brisbane, with former #4 pick Matthew Leuenberger coming into his prime, took Sam Mayes at #8, and Richmond, satisfied with Ivan Maric in the ruck, went with triple premiership defender Nick Vlaustin at #9.

Joe Daniher, now at Brisbane, went father/son to Essendon at #10, Carlton, with Matthew Kreuzer among the League’s best ruckman, took Troy Menzel (44 games) at #11, and Gold Coast, with Zac Smith shaping as a long-time ruck prospect, chose Jesse Lonergan (60 games) at #13.

North, with Todd Goldstein in his prime, preferred Taylor Garner (49 games) at #15, Geelong, having settled on Trent West in the ruck after Brad Ottens’ retirement, went with Jackson Thurlow (later to play with Sydney) at #16.

Fremantle, with 183-gamer Aaron Sandilands about to turn 30, looked long and hard at Grundy but decided ‘no’ only hours before the draft and instead took Josh Simpson (two games) at #17.

So Grundy went to Collingwood at #18 to be groomed as the successor to ex-Sydney premiership ruckman Darren Jolley, who, going on 31, was in the twilight of his career.

Sydney, with Shane Mumford a premiership ruckman at 26 in 2012, chose Dean Towers (57 games) at #22, Harrison Marsh (25 games) at #44 and Matthew Dick (0 games) at #64, but struck gold when they jagged Jake Lloyd and Dane Rampe at #16 and #37 in the rookie draft.

Eleven years on Grundy has played 194 games to rank eighth for games played among the AFL Draft Class of 2012 behind Rampe (230), Macrae (230), Wines (228), Lloyd (223), Vlastuin (2011), Whitfield (2009) and Melbourne pick #26 Jack Viney (196).

The 203cm super-athlete enjoyed a 5-3 record for Collingwood against Sydney as he built a football CV headed by All-Australian selection in 2018 and ‘19, the Herald Sun Player of the Year Award in 2018, when Collingwood lost the grand final to West Coast by five points, and an equal sixth-placed finish in the 2019 Brownlow Medal with 23 votes. In six years from 2016-21 he finished 4^th-5^th-1^st-1^st-7^th-6^th in the Collingwood best and fairest.

He gave the Swans a close-up look at his class when he picked up two Brownlow Medal votes at the SCG in Round 20, 2018 for 24 possessions, one goal and 57 hit-outs before Tom McCartin soccered the match-winning goal lying on the SCG turf, and three votes for 18 possessions and 64 hit-outs in a seven-point Pies win at the SCG in Round 10, 2019.

He closed out the 2019 season with a career-best 73 ruck hit-outs against GWS in the preliminary final – a hit-out count bettered only twice in League history. North’s Goldstein had 80 hit-outs in 2015, and Adelaide’s Sam Jacobs had 74 in 2017.

His stellar 2019 campaign was rewarded with a seven-year mega contract extension, but two years on, as Collingwood faced a salary cap squeeze, he was traded to Melbourne for pick #27.

The thinking from Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin was that Grundy and Melbourne captain Max Gawn, a six-time All-Australian, would form the best ruck combination in history. So convinced was he that he traded 2021 premiership big man and former #3 draft pick Luke Jackson to Fremantle.

But the Grundy–Gawn combination didn’t work. Grundy finished the season playing with the Casey Demons in the VFL, and after Melbourne were eliminated from the 2023 AFL finals in straight sets the club finally accepted it was a waste to have one of the AFL’s best big men in playing in the VFL.

On 10 October 2023, precisely one year after he’d been traded to Melbourne, Grundy was on-traded to Sydney for pick #46 and a future second-round pick.     

Already tagged “the recruit of the year” by a lot of media pundits in Melbourne, Grundy looms as one of the Swans’ best pick-ups since the club’s move to Sydney in 1982.

Over 11 years Grundy averages 17.1 possessions (9.9 contested possessions), 0.36 goals, 30.8 hit-outs, 4.1 tackles and 4.0 clearances.

Compared with Gawn, Adelaide’s Reilly O’Brien, Gold Coast’s Jarrod Witts, Fremantle’s Sean Darcy, Essendon’s Todd Goldstein, Brisbane’s Oscar McInerney, Geelong’s Rhys Stanley and St Kilda’s Rowan Marshall, who statistically are the top 10 ruckmen in the competition this year, his numbers are overwhelming.

He ranks #1 in possessions, contested possessions, clearances and tackles, #6 for average hit-outs (but only 2.46 hit-outs per game behind #1-ranked Witts) and #7 for average goals (but only 0.17 goals per game behind #1 Stanley).

It’s been a big off-season for Grundy – a super-athlete 203cm ruckman at ‘work’ and a bespectacled and quietly-spoken academic ‘after hours’, having completed a Bachelor of Health Sciences from Latrobe University in Melbourne in December 2020 and headed to Sydney with just one unit to complete an MBA at Melbourne Business School.

In December 2023 he announced his engagement to long-time physiotherapist girlfriend Rachael Wertheim. Now living near Sydney’s famous beaches, the pair have been together since his pre-AFL days in Adelaide and share two dogs, Ava and Sam. 

Hotly pursued by Port Adelaide last September after confirming he would leave Melbourne, Grundy quickly decided on Sydney after a meeting with Swans CEO Tom Harley, coach John Longmire, then football boss Charlie Gardiner and assistant-coach Dean Cox.

“I just felt so connected from a values piece,” Grundy said. “It felt really aligned and I think that’s the goal of any career or any job or any pursuit that you’re doing. We (Grundy and his now fiancée) walked out of that meeting, and we just looked at each other. We were like ‘that was really, really cool’. It was hand in glove from the first meeting.”

The Swans are set to play against Grundy’s two former clubs in the first two rounds of the 2024 season – Melbourne at the SCG in Opening Night on Thursday, March 7 at the SCG, and Collingwood in Round 1 on Friday, March 15 at the MCG.

All going well, Grundy will play his 200^th game in Round 6 against the Gold Coast Suns at the SCG on Sunday, April 21 – six days after his 30^th birthday.