HIGHLY rated father-son draftee Tom Mitchell will go to the Sydney Swans for their first-round draft selection, and coach John Longmire is more than happy to pay the high price for the hard-working midfielder.

Mitchell, the 18-year-old son of Barry - who played 170 games for the Swans during a 221-game career, was officially secured by the club in father-son bidding on Monday morning.

Fremantle bid its first round selection of pick No.16 for the tough onballer, which meant the Swans had to spend their top pick of 21 to lock him in.

Longmire said they were more than prepared to use their first pick to recruit the ball magnet.

"We're rapt. We've been looking at Tommy for a long time now and we're thrilled to be able to add him to our new, exciting group of younger players coming through," he said on Monday.

"He's a class player who uses the ball really well. He's hard and he's got an amazing work ethic, which has been the benefit of us getting to know him over the last couple of years.

"He really wants to succeed and we think he'll be a terrific addition to Sam Reid and Alex Johnson and Luke Parker and Gary Rohan and Daniel Hannebery, a number of our young players brought into the club."

Mitchell has been in contact with the Swans for about 12 months and completed part of last pre-season with them, and even stayed with captain Adam Goodes.

The left-foot Claremont player, who was part of the 13th AIS-AFL Academy intake, said he hoped his previous experience with the Swans would give him an advantage when he commenced his pre-season this year.

"It's a great opportunity and I'm just really happy to be given the chance and hopefully I can make the most of it," he said.

"I was just sitting in the room waiting, not sure what was going to happen, whether I'd get picked up at all, fourth, third round, anything.

"I'm just really happy to be given the opportunity."

Mitchell was born in 1993 and was three years old when his father hung up the boots at the end of 1996.

He said he had seen footage of his dad in full flight, and was happy to be compared to him.

He also said he had drawn on Barry's experience of being Fremantle's midfield coach for the past three seasons.  

"Having your dad involved in modern day footy is a bit of an advantage, to be able to get advice on how everything works today," he said.

"It's not as much of a shock to the system with how things work.

"He's very helpful and I'm just very happy to have any advice he's got to help me."

The Mitchell family will be based in Melbourne next year after Barry amicably ended his tenure at Fremantle last month.

Longmire said it had been beneficial to have Mitchell on the Swans' radar for longer than the usual draftee.

He also said the club had been in a good position to recruit him given the compromised nature of this year's NAB AFL Draft.

"I think it's fantastic to be able to do that, with GWS having nine of the first 15 selections, it's a unique period last year and this year in the competition's history," he said.

"To be able to get a quality player at pick 21 of Tommy's stature is very important for the future of the footy club, and we're really excited today and we think it's a great day for the Swans to be able to add Tommy to our list."

He said there was no ceiling on what Mitchell could achieve in 2012, given the success the Swans had with recent draftees Alex Johnston and Luke Parker, who played 20 and 13 games respectively in their debut seasons.

"Our most important thing with Tom is to make sure he has a really solid pre-season to make him resilient enough to be able to train let alone play in AFL footy," he said.

"That will be our first thing that we'll try and make sure we do, get a good pre-season into him and really what happens from there we'll wait and see."