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meltiger said:
The other side of this coin, of course, is that you don't draft someone 'just because they're quick on their feet'.
Richmond, as most clubs will do, pretty much most of the time, drafted to what best suited their needs at the time. KPP stocks don't look brilliant at Punt Rd, but they do have enough numbers to be able to punt on several of them for another year or two and see if they come on. Richmond has depth needs in pretty much every area of the park, so they summed-up the situation and thought that a pacy outside midfielder like Oakley-Nicholls offered the best return from their first pick. This again exposed the myth of the "take the best player available" ideology, given that -- in the arbitrary parameters of phantom drafts and "expert" rankings -- Oakley-Nicholls would have been running behind a number of players (Clark, Hurn, Higgins, Jones, Drum, etc).
I'm not deriding the Richmond approach. Had they taken Hughes or Clark at 8, there's little doubt they would have nailed a lesser midfield option than Oakley-Nicholls at 24; although I'd bet dollars to donuts that they would have been very pleasantly surprised to find Hughes still around then. More likely, they thought there was a good chance of Spangher, Bower or Mills being around at 24. You can also bet dollars to donuts that had their overall KPP numbers been as low as Hawthorn's were last year, then they would have taken Clark at 8.
I was actually surprised that Richmond didn't take Hurn, Higgins or Jones. Miller had strongly talked-up Higgins prior to the draft, but most likely opted for the pacier Oakley-Nicholls due to the overall lack of leg speed in the top side. I suspect this issue counted Hurn out at a lot of clubs, but having seen the footage I've seen of Hurn, I have little doubt he'll come back and bite plenty.
I also contend that Hawthorn, in line with the hot mail coming through in the final days, would have taken Higgins at 6 had Collingwood not passed over Ellis. I'm confident it was never Hawthorn's intention to take Dale Thomas @ 3, and I also think Collingwood would have known this too, hence my belief that all this Hawthorn bluff talk is a load of tosh.
