Adelaide will look to continue its habit of finding valuable players through the rookie draft when it adds three recruits on Wednesday.
Ten current primary listed Crows started their AFL careers as rookies and three former Crows – Michael Doughty, Ben Rutten and Nathan Bassett – reached the 200-game mark.
Exciting forward Charlie Cameron, who played seven AFL games this year after being upgraded, is the latest in a line of former rookies at Adelaide including James Podsiadly, Josh Jenkins, Matthew Jaensch, Matthew Wright, Kyle Hartigan, Ricky Henderson, Sam Jacobs, Rory Laird and Brodie Martin.
Other former Crows rookies include recently retired forward Jason Porplyzia, 2008 club champion Nathan Bock, Sydney premiership defender Marty Mattner, Jonathon Griffin, Jared Petrenko, James Gallagher, Ian Callinan, Luke Thompson and 1998 premiership ruckman Ben Marsh.
Adelaide’s first pick in Wednesday morning’s AFL rookie draft will be at No.9 and it will also call names at picks 27 and 44.
Crows recruiting manager Hamish Ogilvie expects all the clubs to target a wide range of players.
“There’s a slightly different strategy for the rookie draft,” he said
“We are still looking for talent but there is more room to take a bit of a risk or to pick for needs.
“Since last week’s National Draft we’ve sifted back through the available pool and we are confident that we can add some more talent to the squad.”
Adelaide retained defender Jake Kelly and ruckman Jack Osborn as rookies for 2015.
Only five clubs are eligible to have primary list picks in the pre-season draft, held at 10.30am before the rookie selections.
GWS has the first pick and can take up to two players while Carlton has three vacancies.
Pre-season draft order:
1 – GWS Giants
2 – Carlton
3 – Collingwood
4 – Richmond
5 – Sydney Swans;
6 – GWS Giants
7 – Carlton
8 – Sydney Swans
9 – Carlton
All other clubs submitted a full Primary List.
