FORMER Port Adelaide recruiting manager Mick Moylan remembers vividly the moment he claimed Justin Westhoff for the Power with selection #71 in the 2006 National Draft.

As soon as he called out the name and the player identification tag he looked across the room at the Adelaide Crows’ table and saw a bunch of downcast faces. Especially that of Crows football boss John Reid.

“They were really pissed off...I remember the look on Reidy’s face, he wasn’t happy,” Moylan said.

The message from Moylan was clear: While he has never confirmed as much, he thought Adelaide thought they had the tall, skinny Central Districts youngster on their own, and had been set to pounce with selection #78.

Fact or fiction, it’s all part of one of the great draft coups of all time.

At #71 Westhoff, set to play his 250^th AFL game against Carlton at Adelaide Oval on Saturday afternoon, has been value-plus. One of the all-time great selections.

“That’s recruiting - sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong,” said Moylan, who is now enjoying retirement in Geelong after 23 years in pursuit of talent with Port, West Coast and Fremantle.

He confirmed Port had followed Westhoff closely through a 2006 SANFL season in which he played as a 19-year-old with SANFL powerhouse Central Districts, who appeared in 11 consecutive grand finals from 2000-11 for eight premierships.

“He (Westhoff) was a tall, skinny kid playing mainly in a forward pocket in a very strong Centrals side," he said. 

"He’d never been a top-notch State junior and didn’t got a lot of exposure.

“You could go and watch him play and for 90 minutes you’d hardly sight him, and then he would do something which made you think ‘wow – this kid has got something’.

“He was a cruisy, lay-back sort of kid, pretty quiet and very close to his family, and there were some people who wondered whether he had the drive to make it.  And who knows ... if he’d been drafted interstate it might have been different. You never know.

“He could easily have been someone you let go through to the rookie draft, but we had some very good judges of talent and character, and had done a lot of work on him.

“We had someone watching him pretty much every week, and the fact that he kept getting a game in a very good side told us something. In the end we thought he was worth a punt.”

It was a year in which Port had taken Travis Boak at #5, Paul Stewart at #25, Nathan Krakouer at #39 and Robbie Gray at #55 before Westhoff at #71, and rounded out the best draft in club history with Ryan Williams at #83 and Richmond cast-off David Rodan at #86.

Thirteen years on - Boak, Gray and Westhoff are three of 24 players taken in the National Draft and Rookie Draft of November 2006 still playing in the AFL.

The relative value of each player in the draft is one of those football questions that always prompts much debate, but one thing is for sure …. Westhoff is the only player in the Class of ’06 who has hit his peak in his 30’s. And he is showing no signs of slowing down.

Having turned 32 on 1 October last year, the ever-popular bearded warrior became the oldest Port B&F winner when, after 248 games, he collected the coveted Jack Cahill Medal for the first time.

Warren Tredrea had played precisely the same number of games when he picked up his fourth.

Also, he was the oldest among 19 AFL club B&F winners (Collingwood had a tie) – 20 months in advance of the Gold Coast’s Jarrod Harbrow and 15 months older than North’s Shaun Higgins.

Statistically, among the Class of ’06, Westhoff ranks prominently in all key categories.

He will be the fourth of the ’06 draftees to play 250 games behind Joel Selwood (273), Bryce Gibbs (254) and Jack Riewoldt (250).

With 296 goals he is third among this group behind only Riewoldt (608) and Tom Hawkins (500), and, with 4023 possessions, he ranks eighth behind Selwood (7013), Gibbs (5913), Sydney’s Josh Kennedy (6004), Boak (5654), Shaun Grigg (4561), Harbrow (4370) and Bachar Houli (4047).

With nine consecutive top 10 finishes in the club B&F he has been a model of consistency.

Only four 2006 draftees have more – #1 pick Gibbs (11), #5 pick Boak (11), #7 pick Selwood (11) and #13 Riewoldt (10).

And with nine seasons of 20 games or more, only Selwood (12), Gibbs (11) and Riewoldt (10) have more. 

Only four first-time draftees in 2006 who are now retired played 150 games -  pick #32 Kurt Tippett (174 games) and pick #53 Lindsay Thomas (212),from the National Draft, and, from the Rookie Draft, pick #17 Michael Jamison (150) and pick #50 Tom Lonergan (209).

Westhoff debuted alongside Gray in Round 10 2007 against Hawthorn at Football Park on 3 June. He had eight disposals and picked up a bag of three goals which is still a club record for AFL debutants.

He was listed as player #101 on the all-time Port list because #100 Gray was ahead of him alphabetically. Boak became #102 three weeks later.

Now he is set to become the third Port player behind Kane Cornes (300) and Warren Tredrea (255) among a total of 182 players to reach 250 games for the club.

He is second on the Power’s all-time goal-kicking list behind Tredrea (549) with 296, and fifth on the all-time possession list with 4023, behind only Kane Cornes (7060), Boak (5620), Peter Burgpyne (4711) and Chad Cornes (4319), having gone post Dom Cassisi (4015) last week.

And as he cheekily inferred at his media conference this week, Kane Cornes’ club record of 300 games is well within reach. Definitely.