KINNEAR Beatson is the Swans Manager of Player Personnel, which means he’s in charge of the Club’s recruiting.

It’s a difficult year for most recruiting staff this year, as the Gold Coast Suns have eight of the first 13 selections in the AFL National Draft to be held this Thursday evening.

The Swans will have four selections in the draft - picks 21, 40, 57 and 73.

Despite the challenges of this year’s draft, Beatson told sydneyswans.com.au he was optimistic about picking up talented players for the Swans.

Are you confident that with a first round pick at 21, that you can select someone who will be a valuable player for the Swans?
Yes I am optimistic. Experience at the job tells me that, and the opinions of the other guys in our recruiting network. We think with the players that we’ve identified who should still be available at pick 21, we are confident that they will have long-term careers.

It’s a solid pool of kids this year.  It is deficient in a couple of types of players and quite strong in others.

In terms of a pick like 73, I’ve had late picks in the draft before and you’ve always got to back yourself in that you are going to be able to call a player's name that has sufficient talent to play AFL footy and help continue to improve the list but clearly the success rate is better with earlier picks.

Last year the Swans had picks 6 (Gary Rohan) and 14 (Lewis Jetta), as well as selecting Sam Reid, Byron Sumner and Trent Dennis-Lane with later picks. Is there pressure on you this year after having such a successful time at the 2009 draft?
This time of year there is always pressure on every recruiting manager to maximise the opportunities you have through the draft.

You have got to try wherever possible to improve your list and get players in that take you closer to winning a premiership, because ultimately that’s what the whole process is about. We try to give the match committee and the coaching panel enough versatility in the list to be super-competitive.

How much more of a challenge is draft selection this year than previous years?
The fact that Gold Coast have already been able to select a dozen 17 year olds last year, and then have also been able to pre-list players from Queensland and Northern Territory, and then have eight of the first 13 picks, it just dilutes the pool.

A large number of those 17 year olds would have been in the top 20 kids in the draft this year so it certainly makes an impact and no doubt it has given them an opportunity to assemble a lot of talented young players.

How will you approach your selections then on Thursday evening?
You can only select the best names there when our first pick comes around. We will make a decision there and then, regarding the players still there at pick 21.

We’ve been through what we think will be the various scenarios and we’re pretty clear in terms of what we will do, but until that moment arrives we are never entirely sure because the draft can be a little bit unpredictable.

We’ve got a couple of (list) needs that we would like to service out of the draft and we will just have to assess it as we’re going. Because of the nature of this draft, we need to be more tight-lipped this year in terms of what we are looking for. Certainly a bit more tight-lipped than previous years because you are nowhere near as in control of it.

With picks 6 and 14 last year you are getting two real quality picks, well in advance of 21, and then our picks are 40, 57 and 73.

We’ve got one pick inside our first three picks last year. It’s interesting and it’s tough but that’s the way it is and we’ve got to get used to it because it will be that way for a few years.

Did you approach the talent identification process any differently in the last 12 months because of the compromised draft?
We did have to work a bit harder and cast our net a bit wider this year. Since trade week we knew our last pick would be 73, so we’ve been pretty full on reviewing games and talking to people.

Since the end of the season we’ve been looking at a pool of about 100 kids as we whittled it down. We’ll go into the draft with about 60 to 65 names on our list, to get to our 73rd pick.