As one door opens for all the draftees on Friday night, another comes to a near close for recruiters across the country.
St Kilda Recruiting and List Manager Tony Elshaug and his team of recruiters – Chris Liberatore, Mark Smart, Chris Toce and Wayne Hughes – have travelled far and wide in 2017, and while Monday’s Rookie Draft marks the end of this campaign, most of the work is completed by Friday night.
The team at Linen House Centre have departed Victoria 107 times since the start of the year, heading across to Western Australia and South Australia more than 65 times, as well as over to Florida in the United States and Wellington in New Zealand.
Collectively, the Saints’ recruiters have covered 165, 844 kilometres in the air this season. That’s the same distance as flying to the North Pole and back… six times.
To put it another way, it’s more than 241 hours in the air.
And now, it all comes down to Friday night.
The Saints have two picks inside the top ten – picks No. 7 and No. 8 – for the first time in 16 years, as well as picks No. 34 and No. 45 - the same range that acquired Leigh Montagna, Jack Steven and Jack Newnes.
St Kilda’s State Recruiting Managers, Liberatore, Smart and Toce, have all watched more than 100 games of live football each this season, plus countless hours trawling through tapes in the office.
It’s a long road to the draft, but finally, it’s nearly here.
Who will the Saints add with their prized top-ten picks? Can they unearth another gem in the middle of the draft?
