Each year AFL clubs decide their list strategies and assess whether a strong draft hand is likely to yield benefits comparable to the trade assets the picks are worth.
As clubs push higher up the draft board they gain the security that they can draft the players they rate the highest before other clubs and, consequently, increase their chance of securing successful long-term recruits.
Nonetheless, this strategy is not foolproof and hindsight exposes the difficult reality of ranking the ability and potential of players before they have been introduced to an AFL environment.
In this list, the first round of the 2016 National Draft will be reassessed with the benefit of six years of AFL data.
Below is the original 2016 first round:
- Andrew McGrath
- Tim Taranto
- Hugh McCluggage
- Ben Ainsworth
- Will Setterfield
- Sam Petrevski-Seton
- Jack Scrimshaw
- Griffin Logue
- Will Brodie
- Jack Bowes
- Oliver Florent
- Jy Simpkin
- Daniel Venables
- Harry Perryman
- Jordan Gallucci
- Todd Marshall
- Jarrod Berry
- Sam Powell-Pepper
- Tim English
- Isaac Cumming
- Will Hayward
In this draft year, a number of players were taken as father-son and academy selections (eg. Will Setterfield, Jack Bowes, Harry Perryman). The nominal draft order will be adjusted to reflect what clubs would have actually taken into this hypothetical draft.
Where these players are selected it will be assumed that the clubs that matched their bids in the original 2016 draft will continue to do so regardless of where they land in this order.
8. Pick Eight: Jy Simpkin - Gold Coast (Original position - Pick 12)
In the original draft Gold Coast took Will Brodie and Jack Bowes in consecutive picks with the ninth and tenth selections respectively.
Just two picks later, North Melbourne added their reigning dual best-and-fairest winner and vice-captain Jy Simpkin to their list.
Gold Coast is surely envious of what Simpkin has achieved after passing on drafting him in 2016, especially given that the two players they selected in his stead are also midfielders.
Rubbing salt in the wound is the fact that Gold Coast has chosen to give up high picks in consecutive years in order to offload the significant salaries of Bowes and Brodie from their books.
