National Recruiting Manager Derek Hine provides an insight on pick No. 6, father-son prospect Tyler Brown and other drafting permutations as the Magpies prepare to add to their list for 2018 during Friday's National Draft.

What’s Collingwood’s strategy heading into Friday night’s National Draft?
"We’re really excited. It’s the first time for a while that we’ve had a pick inside the first 10 selections, with pick No. 6. We have the scope to take four players in the National Draft. As with other drafts, we will basically put them in a line and call them out, particularly early in the piece. Then it will become more needs-based players.

"We are thinking that with the way the first half a dozen picks are panning out, in terms of where we rate the players, it’s probably going to be geared a little bit more towards the midfield-utility types. Again, that will sort itself out in the next 24 hours or so.

"We have the scope to take four selections. At this point in time, it’s probably unlikely that we would do that, but as with previous drafts, we’ve had some success with players such as Tom Phillips, Tom Langdon and even Jonathon Marsh who got through to those later picks and we rated them, so we just need to keep ourselves a bit of flexibility."

How will Collingwood approach its use of pick No. 6?
"We’re still working through medicals and some other profiles as we speak. We had a meeting on Wednesday afternoon for a bit more of an update on where things sat in that particular area of the draft. This draft, as you would probably be aware, with the commentary, it’s a really even first round. There could be players who are ranked at No. 13, No. 14 and No. 15 jumping inside the top 10.

There is no real, clear No. 1 at this point in time. The popular opinion is Cameron Rayner, but there is more commentary around that selection as well, and that just gives you a real indication of the evenness of the top 10 or a dozen players."

What's the club's current stance on father-son prospect Tyler Brown?
"Tyler is very much the unfinished product. He is physically immature, but there is no doubt that he has shown AFL traits. Tyler’s situation is a little bit different to Callum’s. We have committed to Tyler in the National Draft with the caveat that, if a club happened to bid on him forward of where we would rate him, then we probably would not match the pick. Tyler, Kerry (Tyler's mother), Gavin (Tyler's father) and the rest of the family are fully aware of that.

"We would love to bring him in. He certainly has shown traits and the ability, but it’s going to be a bit of a marathon with Tyler, but we are really excited with his potential, but it’s a matter of looking at seeing how the draft pans out."



Tyler Brown is seen during testing at the AFL Draft Combine last month.

How many people are involved in the drafting process?
"There’s a lot of dialogue that goes on, whether it be for pick No. 6 or pick No. 66, and the success we’ve had with later picks has been the work of the whole team. I’m not just talking about the full-time staff, but I’m talking about our part-time networks, led by Mick Armfield in South Australia, Peter Thorne in Western Australia and Marty King up in Queensland. Those guys do an enormous amount of work. They’re the referral service, if you like, and they are really well supported by our full-time staff.

"It’s more than that, though. It’s about the medical profiling of athletes. The doctors have an enormous buy-in when it comes to that. The psychological profiling, which is critical to our assessments in athletes and quite often we will elevate a player off the back of that or, conversely, potentially push a player back in our rankings because of that profiling. It’s a team effort – just the how the boys play on a Saturday. It’s an enormous amount of work, and clearly it is our Grand Final.

"It’s about us being balanced and educated in all decisions we make. It means we are confident in being able to hand over to the development team and give them something to work with. It’s an exciting time, not only for the club but also the players themselves, and we want to embrace that and really give them a great stepping-stone to a career. But as soon as the boys walk through the door, it’s a whole new world. With that comes an enormous amount of pressure and scrutiny, as we all know, and at no bigger club than what we present.

"It’s important that we are balanced in those decisions and hopefully the guys go and have long and sustained careers."