Crows recruiting manager Matt Rendell, who conceded his club needed to sell itself to some of the future stars at last week’s NAB AFL Draft Camp, said Mackay had offered a player’s perspective on Adelaide’s 30-plus interviews.
Mackay was the only current player to fulfil such a role during the three-day camp held at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.
“It was good for David, from a leadership point of view, because he’s been through all that draft camp rigmarole and come out on the other side,” Rendell said.
“David came across [to Adelaide] from Victoria and he still has his girlfriend in Victoria, so he’s managing that.
“He missed a whole year (2007) with a lot of injuries, but he’s come in during his second year and ended up playing in a final, so that’s a great experience to show the people from interstate because, let’s face facts, Adelaide isn’t high on their agenda in terms of places to go to.”
Rendell said the Crows, who last year took gun Jason Porplyzia with them to Canberra, had found having a player sit in on interviews to be a valuable experience.
“Porps got put in a lot of situations where he didn’t feel comfortable last year. We did a bit of role-playing and he had to make out that he was Simon Goodwin and had just done a terrible 3km first-up,” Rendell said.
“We got the kids to actually tell Goodwin, who was played by Porplyzia, that it wasn’t good enough, so we created a bit of banter back and forth to see how the kids handled it.
“Porps struggled a bit with the first two or three, but once he got into it, he was good and it was a great experience for him.”
