Head of Football David Noble says Adelaide is close to finalising the Club’s draft preparations ahead of this year’s National Draft meet on the Gold Coast.
The Crows will hold live selections 14, 35, 43 and 59 at the draft after shuffling its picks as part of a deal that saw Luke Lowden and Kyle Cheney join the Club during last month’s Trade Period.
Adelaide’s final pick at No.86 will be used to formalise small forward Charlie Cameron’s promotion to the senior list.
Noble said Adelaide’s recruiting department was confident the Crows could secure top talents with all four picks.
“We believe we’re well prepared and the guys are confident that they’ve got a good feel of where the talent is,” Noble said on radio station FIVEaa.
“We’ll finalise that in the next week.”
Club scouts worked overtime during last month’s AFL Draft Combine, where this year’s crop of hopefuls were put through their paces in a range of benchmark tests. Crows staff were among the first to arrive and last to leave on each day of the four-day event at Etihad Stadium.
“There’s a lot of data that goes into recruiting,” Noble said.
“There’s a lot of vision and there’s a lot of assessment pieces with stats. But more importantly, there’s a lot of time interviewing players and their families.
“I’ve got a lot of faith in Hamish Ogilvie, Phil Bunn and the recruiting crew. They’ve worked really hard to explore all our options.”
Twelve players have already been pre-selected by clubs ahead of this year’s National Draft. Five father-son picks and seven academy players will find AFL homes during the meet, which Noble said could play into Adelaide’s hands on draft night.
“With this year’s father-son picks, there are better live picks to be had.
“The level where the line splits the talent is pretty high this year. The pick that you might have in the 40s may play more games than a pick that you have in the 20s in five years time.
“It could be that even, that’s the feel.”
Noble said such was the spread of talent this year that Adelaide’s bold list strategy, which saw the Crows slide four places in the first round of the draft but advance significantly in later rounds, could ultimately pay dividends.
“We would never run the risk of jeopardising a pick No.10,” Noble said.
“It was more about what we did through that Trade Period as a whole. We brought in two players in that were ‘needs’ and actually catapulted our two back-end picks strongly up into the third round.
“As an overall strategy, we’re extremely pleased with how it all panned out.”