While the St Kilda Recruiting team’s Grand Final day will not arrive until late November at the National Draft on the Gold Coast, a fortnight in Europe with many of the best footballers Australia has to offer provides ample opportunity for them to closely study the next batch of AFL stars.
But before the teenagers hop on a plane to Europe, they have a vitally important match to play this Friday at the MCG.
As always, St Kilda’s Recruiting team led by Bains and National Recruiting Manager Tony Elshaug, will be there closely analysing each and every AIS-AFL Academy member.
“This is really the football highlight of the AIS-AFL program for the year,” Bains told SAINTS.com.au this week.
“They will play against Collingwood’s VFL team as a curtain raiser to Hawthorn Fremantle. We will have our full complement of recruiters there and are keen to see how those kids play against seasoned and mature opponents on a massive stage.”
The group of 31 youngsters was selected by the AFL Talent team with help from an AFL Club sub-committee in August last year, and although the boys aren’t guaranteed to find a club in November, there is a strong correlation between this squad and the cream of the 2013 draft crop.
“It’s not a precise science. Not all kids in the program end up being the best in the country when it comes to November. But to give you an example, 11 of the first 12 picks in the 2013 draft were part of this program.”
And the importance of the AIS-AFL trip cannot be underestimated, with current Saints such as Luke Dunstan, Jack Billings, Nathan Wright, Brodie Murdoch, Jimmy Webster and Billy Longer past beneficiaries of the AIS-funded initiative.
Bains will leave for Europe on Saturday evening.
“This trip is a critical part of the process for us. We, like most clubs, are extremely thorough with our drafting process. Across the year, our incredibly hard working team will watch the kids many times over live and on vision, interview them, their families and schools and Clubs and interrogate all the centralised AFL data around physical and mental testing. We don’t compromise on ensuring that all of our decisions are informed as they can be.”
“On the trip we live in close proximity to these kids and get to assess them personally and professionally. Among other things, we will watch them train, watch them play a couple of games and speak to them most days.”
“We will watch them socially and see how they interact with each other and the Clubs, so you really get a great handle on who they are as people, not just footballers. We find this process really saves a lot of time in the back end of the year when we would ordinarily be trying to find out as much information as possible about each kid.”Looking forward to seeing the AIS boys receive their Australian jumpers tonight and another great trip @michaelablett23 and @AFL_Shifter
— Ameet Bains (@Ameet_Bains) April 3, 2014
Aside from learning about the kids, another primary benefit of the trip from a Club perspective is the networking Bains can do with like-minded list managers and recruiters from other clubs.
“You get to build relationships with your peers in a more informal environment,” he said.
“This is useful from a list management perspective because these guys tend to be the ones we are dealing with when it comes to trading, so it’s important to maintain strong and genuine relationships.”
And it’s these working friendships, developed over past years, that have helped St Kilda be bold in its trade negotiations, especially last November when Head of Football Chris Pelchen, Bains and Elshaug successfully implemented a key step in St Kilda’s list management strategy netting the Club three first-round picks in the National Draft.
The bold objective lured Jack Billings, Luke Dunstan and Blake Acres to Linen House Centre, with Billings and Rising Star Dunstan debuting in round one while Acres recovers from injury.
The touring party will spend the first week in London before shifting to Varese in Italy for the second half of the training camp. The Italian town, which is just north of Milan, is the AIS European training base and will expose the touring party to elite sporting facilities.
Though Bains expects the trip to be enjoyable – with an outing to Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane clash against Sunderland on the agenda – it is clear it is far from a “junket.”
“Last year at the end of the trip we produced an almost 100-page booklet that covered all the kids on the trip and what we learnt. Updated throughout the year, it was a vital reference tool we used right up to the draft. We expect to do a similar thing this time around.”
So what is St Kilda looking for? It’s pretty simple he said: Talented players that meet our football and athletic requirements, with the right attitude and mental resilience to succeed at the elite level.
“The beauty of the trip is that you get to watch them train and play, and we have the chance to get to know them and some of their families on a personal level. Their character is critical as to how they are going to fit in and cope within an AFL club environment and overcome the inevitable hurdles and issues that arise.”
Whatever Bains and Liberatore find, this is yet another step, albeit a significant one, on the road to the 2014 draft – and by extension, St Kilda Football Club’s future.
