SCOUTS’ HONOUR

GEELONG’S recruiting team will continue to pore over vision of this year’s prospects during the game’s hiatus to be best prepared for the AFL draft.

Talent ID manager Troy Selwood and fellow full-time recruiting staff Liam Woodland and Nelson Browne have been stood down, as have 11 scouts, including a talent-watcher in Ireland. List manager Stephen Wells has also been stood down.

The NAB League has been suspended until at least the first weekend in June and there is the prospect recruiters will have to select players in the draft based off no games in 2020.

Selwood said his team would continue to work through this challenging period. “We’re really feeling for all the boys who were going into their draft year in 2020,” Selwood said.

“It’s obviously devastating to be missing out on opportunities to play in front of the recruiters and push their case, but they can rest assured we’re doing a lot of work still behind the scenes and watching a lot of vision of football from their under-16 and under-17 years.

“While there is a halt to footy at the moment, we’re still familiarising ourselves really well with the prospects going into 2020.”

Selwood said he believed the under-18 championships would not go ahead in their usual format but hoped games would be staged at some point.

He was optimistic some NAB League matches would be played this year to allow top-age players a chance to showcase their skills to recruiters. “I’m still very optimistic that we can see some football, even if it’s just a block of six, eight, 10 weeks of football would be massive for us,” he said.

“I’m the optimist in terms of hopefully seeing some young kids being able to play their football.

“Whether you get your proper season of both NAB League and APS, AGS level I’m not so confident in that, but I would hope the boys that are continuing their training and have ambitions to be AFL players are getting their heads around that there is still a chance for them to be playing football this year.”

Selwood’s team still has access to recruiting resources, including vision and data from previous seasons and testing trials.

AFL clubs are unable to interview players during the shutdown but Geelong will conduct character checks in the interim.

“Stephen Wells and the list management team have put us in such a great position over the last couple of years in terms of our draft position,” Selwood said.

“At this stage we’ve got four picks inside the top 35 as it currently stands. There’s going to be lots of good players available with those picks. We’ll continue to do plenty of work on all those boys.

“We’re going to be looking at different ways to do our work to try and access more and more vision, whether it be school football, from local football, from obviously the NAB League and the state leagues around the country.

“It’s our job and our duty to make sure we get as much information as possible to make sure, come the draft, we’ll be making really good decisions.”