With the 2016 National Draft drawing closer by the day, saints.com.au has taken the opportunity to reflect on the history behind each pick St Kilda holds this Friday night.
St Kilda will enter the annual cattle call in Sydney with three picks at their disposal – No. 23, No. 36 and No. 60 – aiming to further enhance a list that narrowly missed out on a return to September in 2016.
Sitting in the back end of the second round, and occasionally at the start of the third round, pick No. 36 was once used to acquire former Hawthorn champion midfielder, Sam Mitchell, back in the 2001 super draft.
While the pick hasn’t had too many significant hits just yet, Mitchell is one of the best third round picks in the history of the draft, with the new West Coast Eagle achieving an array of accolades across 307 games and 15 seasons at the highest level.
The enforcer: Adelaide ruckman Rhett Biglands during his time at the Crows.
Five Peter Crimmins Medals, four premierships, three All-Australian guernseys and now the game’s most prestigious individual prize, the 2012 Brownlow Medal, Mitchell has one of the best resumes of any current player in the game.
Former All-Australian key defender, Jonathan Hay, was another pick No. 36 banked by the Hawks, with the West Australian recruited in 1996. He went on to play 149 in nine years at Glenferrie Oval, before finishing his career at North Melbourne.
Two years after Hay was plucked from Perth, Essendon read out Danny Jacobs’ name in 1998, where the Victorian played 81 games in his first five seasons before being traded to Hawthorn at the end of 2003. Jacobs played 45 games at the Hawks before he was forced to retire in 2008 due to a degenerative hip problem.
In 1999, Adelaide drafted Woodville-West Torrens ruckman Rhett Biglands with pick No. 36, two years after he was initially placed on Port Adelaide’s inaugural list ahead of their inception in 1997. Biglands played 134 games across nine seasons in West Lakes, before a lingering knee issue forced him into retirement at the end of 2008.
