In the lead up to Thursday night’s National Draft, sydneyswans.com.au spoke to the man who has spent the best past of 12 months wading in this year’s talent pool trying to find the next Luke Parker, Alex Johnson or even Adam Goodes - Swans Manager of Player Personnel, Kinnear Beatson.

SS: Kinnear, what magic can you work on Thursday evening with picks 43 and 61?

KB: Pick 43 is our first live selection, given that we have used 21 with our father-son recruit Tommy Mitchell. With Tommy we know we are getting another inside mid coming in. So what we have done is have a look at the draft pool available, in conjunction with our own list demographic and tried to work out where we are a bit deficient and where we can top up, if we can.

We look at the draft pool in categories, but then on the day we will have to make a call on who is the best available player according to our needs, unless of course we get to the draft like we did last year and there is a player like Luke Parker who is just sitting there and we clearly rated well above where he was still available in the draft.

You mentioned Tommy Mitchell, you must be thrilled to get him with pick 21. Would you have ever thought he would be available there in the draft?

No, I wouldn’t have thought he would get to 21 but the funny thing was on the morning of the bidding system, I still think if Fremantle hadn’t have bid their first round pick that we would have got him with our second round pick, which would have been a massive bonus. At the end of the day we were just happy to secure him and most clubs knew that we were really committed anyway.

He is a good player, a dual-sided player, a very good decision maker, uses the ball extremely well both with hand and foot, and again, it gets back to the fact that you can never have enough smart footballers. You can look at players that lack leg speed, but smart footballers move the ball quickly, they make good decisions, so the deficiencies of leg speed, etcetera, don’t appear quite as apparent.

Last year with late picks you identified Luke Parker and Alex Johnson, is there a key to finding talent late in the draft?

Well, we have some key criteria that we use and value in players. It obviously is a combination of things like their skill level, their competitiveness, their athleticism, and their drive and we just marry it up with what is available at the time. But we are looking for certain criteria that we really value and we will try to utilise that again this year if we can.

How hard does having such late picks in the draft make your job versus having early picks?

The top end talent is more obvious because they have probably been in the system longer, played in the championships, are an AIS graduate or a scholarship holder, so you’re more aware of their performances.

The late picks are often players who have come into the system a bit later or had injuries or just haven’t had the same amount of exposure. That’s where you have to use your judgement and experience in terms of what works and what doesn’t work.

What are all the areas you take into account when assessing young players?

Their footballing ability is one thing but we really look at their attitude towards hard work, training and schooling. We do a lot of interviews with other people that have been associated with that player to try and start building up a profile. This particular year we have taken a lot of interest in the psyche appraisals that have been done through the Draft Combine. The AFL have done a couple of new ones this year that our club psychologist is quite pleased with at this stage.

So the skill factor and the athleticism have to be givens but it comes down to does this player really want it and that’s probably been an indicator of a player like Alex Johnson that has just stepped over quite a few because of that. There is lot of different things to balance and after all of that, there is still an element of gut instinct. 

Following the Gold Coast Suns last year, you are again faced with a compromised draft due to the strong hand held by GWS. Did you learn anything from last year’s draft?

What we expected last year was because the Suns held so many draft picks early, that the natural draft order might get a little bit out of skew. We thought they might start taking players earlier than where we have them rated because that’s what they need and if they don’t take one then, they may not get them with a later pick. That is something that could occur again this year with GWS. There will be certain trends that come up in the draft, say for example the year we took Sammy Reid, his pick was 38, we thought that if we didn’t take a tall then, the likelihood was that we weren’t going to get one with our two later picks which were 54 and 55, so in hindsight that was a good call to make.

I’m not one for going in there with a list of one to fifty and when it is your pick taking the next number that is available. You have just got to balance it up with how it is looking, what else you know about players and the levels of interest in them and whether another player might sneak through to 61, so you’ll bypass him at 43 and take someone else.

In this year or previous years are you more attracted to your needs rather than the best player or is it always pretty balanced?

It is pretty balanced to be honest. You are aware of your needs but you can’t compromise and I’ve made mistakes before in drafts where we have gone for a certain type because that’s what the list needs but you overlooked significantly better talents. So my experience tells me to look at the most talented player. Say for example you might need a ruckman or talls, however this may lead to you overlooking a really good midfielder. I think when you look at the history of the game and successful sides, good players are able to play in multiple roles so you can never have enough good players. You may go out and draft a key position player and he is not quite good enough and then you can’t play him anywhere else. He can’t play on a wing or a half back flank or rotate through the midfield so your hands are tied a little bit and the main problem is trying to balance that up.

How long have you been watching prospects for this year’s draft?

Well to give you an example, the draft is on the 24th of November and I think it’s the weekend of the 9th of December that the AIS go into camp. So we will go to Canberra then because that is next year’s batch of draftees. So we get into it pretty much straight away, but there is a significant break between late December and February, before we track them again from March onwards.

With late picks I would assume you would have to cast a wide net. Is there any football field that you haven’t been to during the past twelve months?

When they come from WA or SA they must have come from the WAFL on the SANFL. Victoria is a little bit different, they don’t have to of come from the VFL or the TAC cup so the rules are slightly different for Victoria. There is a possibility that they could come from the amateurs or a minor league despite history suggesting that very few do, but you still have to be mindful of it. In terms of looking at what we will be getting at 43 and 61, you just have to be right across it.

Every year there is talk of whether it is a “strong” or “weak” draft but does it really matter?

I don’t really get that hung up on it - it is what it is. We will bash it around on the anvil and whack it into shape to find out what we can get but there is no point cursing about it.

Where it does influence you is with the list management group figuring out how many picks you would have in any one year. If it seems a really strong, deep draft, you might elect to have more picks like the year Geelong did when they got all those really strong players.

This particular year there is not as many clubs having a lot of picks in fact some I hear might only have one or two by the time they upgrade rookies, etc. Next year is “supposed” to be a strong draft, but they’re 17 and just don’t know how they will develop over the next year.

So finally, how do you think you will go?

Fantastic! Well… we don’t really know. Everyone keeps their cards pretty close to their chest and there is not a lot going around yet in terms of how other clubs are rating them. We have a group of about 20 that we hope could get through to our picks.

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