National Recruiting Manager Geoff Parker on trade movement this year:
“This year, it is a bit more ongoing.
“Last year, we were a bit more settled having pick five. We had a pretty good idea what was going to happen in front of us.
“With pick 12, it is a little bit harder to work out. But I still think there is a possibility for some clubs to trade, so we aren’t exactly sure who will have the picks in front us.
“It is a moving parts thing this year, so we are just working through it.”
Parker on the club’s position and a potential move up the draft order:
“We have explored a couple of options with some clubs - now we will wait and see what’s happening on the night.
“Some clubs with multiple picks in the first round - we will probably assess if there are players we like who haven’t been picked. We will explore whether we can trade up.
“We are comfortable where we are - that’s the reason we did what we did with the swapping of picks.
“We have a good feel of the players in the mix for where we sit, and we like what they can do.
“There are some players at the top who are pretty handy and if they start to fall a little bit, then we wouldn’t be against going up.”
Parker on assessing players over a number of years:
“The position I am in, I’m following the players from when they are about 16 years old,”
“You’ve got an idea of just not this year’s draft but also next year’s draft pool and what that looks like.
“You make assessments based on that, and how you think and hope your teams goes in the coming season.
“There are a lot of things to consider when you do the trades, and we think we’ve done it with enough information and for the right reasons.”
Parker on next year’s highly compromised draft:
“A compromised draft is when you have the NGA players and father-sons,”
“Those players are already aligned to a club. The club has the last right of refusal, so it’s hard to get them.
“Looking at next year’s draft pool, there are several really talented players already aligned to a club. That is part of the reason we did what we did.
“We have a couple of players in next year’s draft who are aligned to us as well. It is sort of working for us and against us.”
Parker on father-son selections:
“We assess all of the players,”
“But when they are aligned to us, we probably know more about Trent (Burgoyne) and Jackson (Mead) than any other player because they are at the club.
“They are allowed to come to the club and do certain things. We get to see them amongst our playing group.
“With Trent it’s been a lot harder because he has been injured. He’s basically played three quarters of a state trial game for the season.
“We think he’s got a bit of talent but we haven’t been able to project what that looks like because we haven’t seen him play much.
“We are hopeful he ends up at our club but we just don’t know.”
Parker on Jackson Mead:
“We would all like him to (become a Port Adelaide player). He’s a talented player,”
“We have assessed that he might get bid for in the 20s, and we were at 29, so we thought if we could try and get in front of that then it might give us access to a player before.”
Parker on the excitement of multiple picks in the first round:
“To come up in the draft and have some extra picks is great,”
“It does put a little bit of extra pressure on the recruiting team, but we would like to think we have a pretty good track record.
“If you back and look at the premiership clubs, they tend to have two or three pretty strong drafts close together.
“We thought last year with Connor (Rozee), Zak (Butters) and Xavier (Duursma) worked well, so we are going to try and bring in another trio of talented players that come through the club together.”
