With no football being played across the country at any age group due to the coronavirus pandemic, the challenges posed to the football industry are wide-reaching in their impacts.

Dom and Mike spoke to Brisbane Lions National Recruiting Manager, Stephen Conole, in this weeks’ The Roar Deal about what those impacts look like for the draft this year and our recruitment prospects as a Club. 

The social distancing regulations and subsequent shutdown of the Club have meant that the recruiting team have had to get a little bit creative with how they assess the current group coming through for draft, however Conole insists they aren’t too far behind where they would normally be.

“Obviously, we’re slightly behind where you’d normally be, but we have done a fair bit of work with this group across the past two years” he said.

“We have lots of vision on the server and have downloaded as much vision as possible of this group across their 16^th and 17^th year, so we’re working through that in the first instance.

“From what we’ve seen there’s a group of about 30 or so players that we’re confident we’ve seen some good attributes in that would place them somewhere around that first round of draft, and so we’re concentrating on that group as a priority at the moment.”

With regard to the potential that changes will be made to the draft age and Club list sizes moving forward, Conole and his team are awaiting clarity from the AFL before making any changes to their planning processes, however he is of the belief that kids are usually ready to go at age 18. 

“The AFL pathway structure means that the top end players are ready to come into the system at that age, they’re ready to go physically and ready to start their careers” he said. 

“In some instances, depending on their date of birth and State they have already had a year out of school by this time.

In terms of the best place for the development of their football, it is to be on an AFL list with the expertise and resources a Club environment can provide.”