AFL player draft

It is the time of year when fans of Australian Football are starting to miss their regular footy fix. The long season of saturation media coverage, along with tipping competitions and maintaining fantasy teams means that most are happy enough when October rolls around and they can stop thinking about footy. It is a relief to no longer be bombarded with information about dodgy hamstrings and defensive zones and Collingwood’s coaching succession plan.

Two months on from the grand final a little information starts to flow about the rehab progress of players who had off season surgery. Articles start appearing in newspapers about delisted players training at new clubs in the hope of being drafted back into the AFL machine. There are other stories too, like the one about a players new tattoo. The serious footy fan, refreshed after their break from footy, sifts through this information and starts to develop a sense of how their club is likely to go next season, even though it is still about 5 months before it starts.

In addition to these generally superficial off-season stories, there is the national draft, which will take place tomorrow night. Nothing else in football separates the footy nerd from the relatively casual fan like the draft does. For the footy nerd, it is THE big event in the football year. There is good reason for that, as it is the most important day of the year for a team’s long term success.

If your club performs consistently well at the draft, you can guarantee your team will be relatively successful over a given period. Draft day performance is difficult to assess though, as for most of us, it will be the first time we’ve heard of the vast majority of the draftees. This also makes it easy to be enthusiastic about the future of your team.

Not all teams will do well on draft day, but the most predictable thing about the process is that each club will make enthusiastic comments in the media about the players they have selected. This isn’t merely the marketing exercise that cynics make it out to be, although there is obviously an element of that.

The club decides which players to pick, so it makes sense that they are genuinely enthusiastic about them, otherwise they would select different players. This means that draft day is usually a good time one for footy fans, because almost everyone gets to go away feeling like their team did well.

Fox Sports is televising the draft this year, from 6:30pm Thursday, and there is live radio coverage on SEN, 3AW and 5AA. The AFL’s official website also has comprehensive real time coverage, along with plenty of pre-draft coverage including phantom drafts and player profiles, and something they have called a draft machine that allows you to vote for the players you would like to see your club draft, and to view lists of the most popularly selected players for each team.

As I said, it is a big event for footy nerds.