Sydney Swans fans will anxiously await the moment on Wednesday evening when General Manager – Recruiting and List Strategy Kinnear Beatson turns on his microphone and identifies the player the club will draft with selection number five at the AFL Draft.

Recent history says whoever Beatson and his recruiting team settle on will be a very good player.

Not guaranteed, but so thoroughly are prospective draftees scrutinised these days, that anything less will rarely go so early.

Sydney fans will immediately embrace pick five, speculating how quickly he might work his way into the side and when he might begin to make a genuine impact.

Watching as intently as anyone – and more intently than most – will be recently retired Sydney champion turned assistant coach Jarrad McVeigh and champion forward Lance Franklin.

It will be a moment that will take them back to the same moment at the beginning of their own AFL careers, when they too were chosen with pick five.

McVeigh, third on Sydney’s all-time games list, was pick five at the 2002 AFL Draft in one of the great sliding-doors moments in history.

He joined the Swans after St Kilda had taken Brendon Goddard at number one, North Melbourne Daniel Wells at number two, Brisbane Jared Brennan at number three and the Western Bulldogs Tim Walsh at number four.

But this only happened after Carlton was stripped of the first two picks of the draft over salary-cap breaches, effectively pushing each club two spots up the draft order.

Sydney went to the draft with pick five when, ordinarily, it would have had pick seven.

History tells us Steven Salopek went to Port Adelaide at selection six and Andrew Mackie to Geelong at number seven, before Luke Brennan (Hawthorn), Hamish McIntosh (North Melbourne) and Jason Laycock (Essendon) completed the top 10.

McVeigh ranks second for games among the top-10 picks in the AFL class of 2002 behind Goddard (334) and ahead of Mackie (280), Wells (258), Brennan (173), McIntosh (126), Salopek (121), Laycock (58), Brennan (28) and Walsh (one).

The Franklin draft of 2004 was similarly contentious but for different reasons.

Richmond took Brett Deledio at number one, before Hawthorn picked Jarryd Roughead at number two and the Western Bulldogs Ryan Griffen at selection three.

Then Richmond surprised many, and made perhaps the most infamous choice in AFL Draft history, when it overlooked Franklin and opted for Richard Tambling.

Also passed over and later taken in the top 10 were pick six Tom Williams (Western Bulldogs), pick seven Jordan Lewis (Hawthorn), selection eight John Meesen (Adelaide), number nine Jordan Russell (Carlton) and pick 10 Chris Egan (Collingwood).

Franklin, who played his 300^th AFL game in Round 23 this year, is within striking distance of former teammate Lewis, who with 319 matches tops the class of 2004.

Roughead (283), Deledio (275), Griffen (257), Russell (125), Tambling (124), Williams (85), Egan (267) and Meesen (6) complete the top 10.

Only three times have the Swans gone to the AFL Draft with pick five.

In 1992 the club took Jason Spinks, described at the time as a “highly skilled half-forward” and likened in style to former Hawthorn champion and Swans recruiter Gary Buckenara.

But he spent only two weeks in Sydney in his first season before returning to Perth for personal reasons. Then, after suffering a serious knee injury in 1993 playing with his junior club South Fremantle, he never again moved to the NSW capital and was de-listed at the end of 1994. He never played AFL football.

In 1993 the Swans had pick five in addition to selections one and four.

After investing number one in South Fremantle defender Darren Gaspar, watching Brisbane pick up Nigel Lappin at number two and seeing Justin Murphy go to Richmond at number three, the Swans went with Glenn Gorman from the Geelong Falcons at pick four and Adam Heuskes from Norwood at selection five.

It was another draft with mixed outcomes. Gaspar played only 21 games for Sydney but added 207 with Richmond, Lappin played 279 games with Brisbane, Murphy played 185 games for Richmond, Carlton, Geelong and Essendon, and Gorman never played for the Swans before making two appearances for North Mekbourne.

Heuskes played 49 games with the Swans before 37 matches with Port Adelaide and 39 with Brisbane.

The 33 players chosen at pick five at the AFL Draft since its 1986 inception are:

1986, Michael Taylor – 0 games, Geelong
1987, Michael Clark – 0 games, St Kilda
1988, Chris Naish – 161 games, Richmond/Port Adelaide
1989, Brad Rowe – 73 games, Brisbane/Collingwood/Fremantle
1990, Stewart Devlin – 0 games, Geelong
1991, Jason Norrish – 148 games, Melbourne/Fremantle
1992, Jason Spinks – 0 games, Sydney
1993, Adam Heuskes – 115 games, Sydney/Port Adelaide/Brisbane
1994, Joel Smith – 221 games, St Kilda/Hawthorn
1995, Brendan Krummel – 74 games, West Coast/Fremantle/Hawthorn
1996, Daniel McAlister – 6 games, Essendon
1997, Luke Power – 302 games, Brisbane/GWS
1998, Michael Stevens – 61 games, Port Adelaide/North Melbourne
1999, Leigh Brown – 246 games, Fremantle/North Melbourne/Collingwood
2000, Andrew McDougall – 43 games, West Coast/Western Bulldogs
2001, Xavier Clarke – 106 games, St Kilda/Brisbane
2002, Jarrad McVeigh – 325 games, Sydney
2003, Brock McLean – 147 games, Melbourne/Carlton
2004, Lance Franklin – 300 games, Hawthorn/Sydney #
2005, Scott Pendlebury – 301 games, Collingwood #
2006, Travis Boak – 264 games, Port Adelaide #
2007, Jarrad Grant – 95 games, Western Bulldogs/Gold Coast
2008, Michael Hurley – 179 games, Essendon #
2009, Ben Cunnington – 209 games, North Melbourne #
2010, Jared Polec – 128 games, Brisbane/Port Adelaide/North Melbourne #
2011, Matt Buntine – 59 games, GWS #
2012, Jake Stringer – 128 games, Western Bulldogs/Essendon #
2013, Kade Kolodjashnij – 80 games, Gold Coast/Melbourne #
2014, Jordan deGoey – 88 games, Collingwood #
2015, Darcy Parish – 76 games, Essendon #
2016, Will Setterfield – 20 games, GWS/Carlton #
2017, Adam Cerra –41 games, Fremantle #
2018, Connor Rozee – 22 games, Port Adelaide #

# denotes players still playing.