So tomorrow’s the big day, how are the recruiting team feeling?
Everyone’s excited. It’s been a long year and a very different year to normal. We’ve still done a lot of work and we feel like we’re as prepared as we possibly could be and we’re excited about who we’re going to get.
Our drafting team has done a great job this year going above and beyond, contacting schools, local clubs, country competitions. They've tracked down as much vision as possible that’s been filmed over the past two years and re-coded in house.
I was fortunate to be in the hub on the Gold Coast and travel with the team back to Perth, so I was able to see four rounds of WAFL and three rounds and SANFL footy. That was a huge benefit for myself, being able to get outside of Victoria to see those games.
The recruiting team, it’s amazing the amount of vision they’ve been able to track down and code and trawl through, so we could feel that we’re as prepared as we most possibly could be. Considering the year and the lack of footy being played, we’ve tried to make up for it in other ways to make sure we’re as prepared as any club.
We’ve got Neil Ross, who’s based in WA. He’s been able to see the entire WAFL season. Dave and Ed McMullin here in Victoria as well as Braeden Money, who have just been hammering the vision and coding game after game.

How difficult has it been to scout players this season? Do you think every clubs' draft rankings would be a lot different if it had been a ‘normal’ year?
I think it would be quite different. Players, particularly in Victoria didn’t get the opportunity to show how much they’d developed or come on in the past 12 months. There’s always players that jump up that the industry isn’t aware of and develop late. I think there will be a lot of those players, that haven’t had the chance to really show their wares and come on.

Is Sam Sturt’s 2018 draft year an example of this?
Yes, if this was his draft year he probably wouldn’t be found until his 19th year. Halfway through his 18th year he was still playing school football and had a heavy cricket background. It was his back half of the year for the Dandenong Stingrays and his finals series where he played really well that pushed him right up into draft calculations.

I think this year we’ll get more variation between club orders than normal. Without a national championships or a full season, everyone is getting the same information and the same viewing. It’s a bit more of a recruiters’ draft, where you’re going with your eye and your instinct based on a lot of vision and reports from under-aged years.

And the plan is to take four players in the National Draft?
That’s right. In an ideal world, we’ll have our first pick, pick 12, which will move around based on academy bids, and pick 32 as well. We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to use that live before a bid comes for our own NGA players, who we’d like to get with our later picks. We’ve got them ranked in our draft order and it depends on where the bid comes.

Have you had much input from our NGA coaches like Tendai Mzungu or Roger Hayden on them as players?
Tendai has done a great job developing them for the past couple of years. We work with the guys in the NGA initially on who to sign and who to get into the academy. Then we step back and Roger and Tendai get to work and they work closely with them, developing them. We’re in the background watching them play and watching how they develop and comparing them to the rest of the pool. At the end of the year, both Tendai and Roger made a final recommendation on how they see them as players and also as professionals and their character to give a full summary and a draft recommendation that we put a strong weighting on.

Any issues taking interstate players, especially SA-based players, considering the current uncertainty with interstate borders?
That won’t be a factor. We were in South Australia on the weekend doing some interviews over there. We caught up with Michael Frederick and Luke Valente, who came along to a couple of the interviews with us. James Aish and Brennan Cox are also in South Australia, so they’re in the same boat. We won’t have an issue in drafting an SA player, it just may mean that instead of arriving in Perth for a couple of weeks of training before Christmas, they’ll probably get there post-Christmas. They would stay in South Australia and train with the other Freo boys in SA in that time.
If we draft from Victoria, or any other state outside of SA, the borders are now open so the players can travel across without quarantining.

Fremantle has always prioritised taking the best available players but will there also be a focus on either getting some pace or a tall forward?
That pretty much sums it up. Particularly early in the draft, you have to take what’s there in the draft at that level, whoever that might be. With the second pick and even with our rookie picks, we’ll be looking to add some leg speed and a developing tall forward would be nice as well. We’ll do all we can to get some pace and some tall forward through the door but again, you’re limited sometimes with what’s in the draft and at your picks around that area but we’ll be doing all we can to make that happen.

We have picks 12, 32, 55, 56, 63. How much are you expecting academy bids to affect our draft hand?
We’re expecting our pick 12, by the time we pick, to be around pick 15. We think a bid will come before pick 12 for Jamarra Ugle-Hagan from the Western Bulldogs, Braeden Campbell from the Sydney Swans and Lachie Jones from Port Adelaide. That would mean pick 12 becomes pick 15 on the night. Pick 32 is a little bit harder to predict as it can go out for the same reason but it can also come in as some picks before it could be used on bids. We think it could end up being around pick 34 on the night.
Our later picks at the back end, they could come right in. Our selections in the mid-50s could potentially be picks in the late 40s.