GWS might have had the most fascinating draft window of any club this year, having again swooped on three surprise selections in the first round before using a selection on night two they had planned to trade away.
The Giants, known for taking a different approach to most clubs at the national intake, selected GWV Rebels utility Ollie Hannaford with their first of three first-round selections on Wednesday night at Pick 18.
That selection was followed one spot later by the recruitment of Sandringham Dragons defender Harrison Oliver and then Western Australia's Cody Angove at Pick 24.
The Giants concluded their draft haul in the days after with the selections of GWV midfielder Jack Ough (Pick 36) and Academy talent Logan Smith (Pick 71) before adding fellow pathways productย Josaia Delana as a category B rookie to complete their 2025 list.
Following their trio of selections from night one, GWS recruitment lead Adrian Caruso and his team had planned to trade out the club's next pick, eventually match a bid for Smith and call it a night.
The club had two names on their board for Pick 36 and would only use that selection on one of those players come night two, with Ough making up half of that list.
Speaking after the draft, Caruso said the club stuck to its plan and managed to see out a successful count.
"We had a plan from the start, and it pretty much went according to that," Caruso said.
"We targeted Hannaford and Oliver with our first two picks, got those two and then had that third pick set aside for Cody Angove, even though clubs were coming for it. We just wanted to pick him, we didn't want to run the risk of losing him.
"The plan then was probably not to use Pick 36 but we reassessed today. We looked at what we brought in last night, and we decided that if someone of Jack Ough's quality was available at 36 we'd pick him, and that's the way it fell.
"There were only two players on our board. We got good offers for that pick, but if one of these two players were there (we'd taken them). If not, we were happy to just take a future pick and we would have got a future second, but we already got an extra future second in the trade period, and Jack was a player we rated really highly through the year.
"We need a bigger body developing mid. That's probably one thing we identified as a list need, as well as a winger, which is why we picked Cody. And when Jack was there it was a no-brainer for us to pick him
"We were confident that there wasn't going to be a bid (on Smith) until after the 40s, which we were comfortable to match."
The selection of Hannaford came after an intriguing year for the Sandhurst native, who started the season in defence before hitting his stride and catching the attention of clubs through midfield and the forward line as a match-winner on his way to the Talent League Grand Final.
Hannaford, who did not receive an invite to the AFL Draft Combine, kicked 21 goals in his last nine games of the year as the Rebels, a spell that included hauls of five and six goals before finishing with a season-high 24 touches in the season decider.
Had it not been for the final month-and-a-half of his campaign, Hannaford wouldn't have appeared on the Giants' board and ended the year as a first-round selection.
"It was definitely only in the last four to six weeks of the season," Caruso said of the club's interest in Hannaford.
"If he got injured at Round 15, he definitely wouldn't have been on our board. If he got injured at Round 15 no one would have been able to see what he was capable of.
"What he produced at the back end as a competitive animal in the forward 50, winning games and showing genuine traits that suit how we want to play.
"We were all the line in terms of our views on him at the end, and then had Kingers (Adam Kingsley) coming in and saying 'this is the exact type of player that fits our system'.
"We've got a clear set of criteria on the types of players that we want to bring in and what traits those players have, and Ollie just ticked every box."
If Hannaford wasn't the biggest bolter of the first round, Angove was, with the Giants rating the Claremont wing/forward highly.
Having initially thought their final first-round choice was going to be their last of the count, Caruso was more than happy to avoid any gamble on trading back and hoping Angove would be available later in the draft.
"We thought that was going to be our last pick. Our plan heading in was that Pick 36 wasn't going to be used. We were going to trade it out. So that was probably why," he said of the Angove selection.
"You never know how interested other clubs are. He had met with a dozen clubs during the year. His manager had no real sense of where he was going to get picked. For me, it's like if you want the player and that's your pick, you just pick the player. Why roll the dice? Why take the risk?
"It's not like we had a draft board that was stacked with other names if he was gone in terms of us wanting to address finding a winger. He was our only one, and we really just wanted him. So at the end of the day, we thought, let's just pick him. We've already got a strong draft hand next year with Adelaide's future second as well as our picks. At the end of the day, we were happy to call his name out there."
The Giants' draft haul adds to the 2023 intake of first-round picks Phoenix Gothard and James Leake, and debutants Harvey Thomas and Joe Fonti.
