What are we hoping to get out of tonight’s draft?
I think it’s very important to firstly say that we are very confident and satisfied with the current balance of our list. We addressed a midfield deficiency last year and we are absolutely delighted with Ben Cunnington and Ryan Bastinac. In fact, we expect all of our draftees from last year to play significant amounts of footy in 2011.
So with that in mind; in this year’s draft Bryce Lewis and our recruiters will be taking the best available player with our picks regardless of the type of player they are.
What do we need most?
I think is a good question because most people will say we need to add some speed to our group. I think every club would like to add speed and we are certainly one of those. But unfortunately with 17 being our first pick, the real speed in the draft is in the top end with the likes of Harley Bennell and David Swallow.
What is the draft quality like?
We are really excited about the quality of the draft and we believe it’s a deep draft, which in turn leads us to why we wanted to use our compensation pick. We believe with pick 27, we will get a player that we have ranked inside the top 25.
Will the Gold Coast’s concessions diminish the quality of player we can get tonight?
Anytime you finish ninth and you get 17 as your first pick you are obviously a fair way down the order. However we are very confident that we will get a very good player onto our list.
Why are we using the compensation pick?
We believe there will be a backlog of compensation picks in the next couple of years due to most clubs storing theirs away and the Greater Western Sydney side coming in. We anticipate this backlog will take around three years to clear. That’s why we decided to use our compensation pick now because we want get that player into the club and develop him straight away. It’s also due to the fact that we think the top 25 is extremely strong and we feel a player who we rank in our top 25 might slip through to us at pick 27. We basically just aren’t prepared to wait 3 years to get that player to Arden Street.
The other point I’d like to make is that we can get a big advantage this year by being the only club to use our compo pick because we have essentially gone up the order.
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