While a five goal bag as a bottom age player in a critical national championships game stood out, a crunching contest in the dying seconds of the same game was equally as defining for St Kilda Recruiting and List Manager, Tony Elshaug.

The player was Paddy McCartin, and despite being ineligible for the draft in 2013, that contest put the wheels in motion for the Saints to utilise their prized No. 1 pick on the Geelong Falcons product 12 months later.

“When he kicked five goals as a 17-year-old in the national championships down in Geelong that was a defining moment – that’s rare to see a player do that,” Elshaug told saints.com.au ahead of Friday’s National Draft in Sydney.

“There was a moment late in the game where he drove through for a low ground ball and he had massive impact on the contest, breaking someone’s collarbone and it was a moment you went: ‘Oh wow, did you see that?’

“It was just a ruthless contest and it was made even more impressive by the fact he was a bottom-ager that year.”

Like all highly rated prospects, St Kilda interviewed McCartin and his family several times in the lead up to the 2014 National Draft, meticulously dotting their ‘i’s’ and crossing their ‘t’s’ before banking the clubs first No. 1 pick since Brendon Goddard on the Geelong boy.

Spending time inside the key forwards home, immersed around his parents and siblings provided the Saints with an insight into McCartin’s character and the values of his family. And what they saw they liked, and liked a lot.

“When we made the home visit you could just see he came from good stock through the hospitality and how genuine his family were and are as people and the kind of upbringing he had had,” Elshaug said.

“It made you think to yourself that this is a good family, these are good people. Sometimes you can just tell from the warmth and the vibe when you walk into a home.

“It’s a bit intangible, a bit hard to define, but it was definitely present at the McCartin’s. That was defining for Paddy.”

From the mountain of information compiled on McCartin prior to the draft, one other moment stands out for Elshaug, before he made the most important pick in his time at St Kilda.

“He wanted to play for Australia and represent his country, but he had a broken finger. He begged them to play and was given the opportunity to play for a short period of time,” Elshaug said.

“He took the first mark of the game when the ball came in, turned around and went bang, and then ran off the ground. He did his job, got his moment and came off. It just showed to us that he was made of the right stuff, that the jumper was really important to him.”