Richmond’s Head of Women's Football Kate Sheahan provides Richmond Media with an overview of what she expects from the 2019 AFLW Draft to be held at Melbourne Showgrounds on Tuesday, October 22.
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How does the AFLW Draft work?
"Players have the option of nominating for a certain region, they can nominate for metropolitan Melbourne, or the whole of Victoria or Geelong. Players that have nominated for Victoria or metro Melbourne, we have the option of picking those players."
Richmond enters the draft with 13 selections but two of those picks have already been taken as pre-draft selections, can you explain that process?
"Through that process, we nominated four of our academy (Richmond VFLW) players, Kate Dempsey, Laura Bailey, Alana Woodward and Grace Egan. Alana did not receive any bids from other clubs so she automatically goes onto our list, while the other three players all had bids placed on them. We matched Laura and Kate’s bids. Unfortunately Carlton used a draft pick (on Egan) that was too high for us to match, so Grace will go to Carlton in their first-round selection."
What will the Tigers be looking for in their selections?
"We’ve got pick No. 7 in the National draft (No. 5 in the Victorian draft). With that pick, we are trying to take the best available talent. It’s a pretty hot top 10 and we’re really unsure of what the other clubs are going to do. That’s the exciting and nervous part of draft day, you’re just never sure of what’s going to eventuate…And then we’re looking for youth, we’re looking to develop and grow this list so that the future years at the Richmond Football Club have got a lot of exciting young talent."
The Draft Combine was earlier this month, what did you see in that talent pool that you liked?
"There were girls that jumped up and tested really well and there were other girls that gave you a good insight into their capacity to push themselves, how they move and how they’ve progressed from previous years when we’ve seen them at the National Championships. It was really great to meet them and have conversations with them and just get to know them a little bit more intimately as well. They’re a terrific young bunch of girls who just want an opportunity at AFLW level. It was really nice for them to get to also know us as a group, we had our head coach Tom Hunter there, our recruiter Lauren Tesoriero and our head of high performance Matt Parker."
Richmond’s first round selection of pick No. 7 will be the Club’s first ever AFLW draft pick, how exciting is this moment for the Richmond Football Club?
"(It will be) a massive moment for the Club. A lot of people behind the scenes have been building for two years for this process to occur. And we’re really excited about the draft because we’re going to be able to put the final pieces of the puzzle together and take 11 players on the day, which will formalise our list to 30 players. There's a lot of unknowns on draft day (but) we have good conversations with Blair Hartley and Matt Clarke in our (Richmond) AFL program about what to expect...We just can't wait to meet the future 11 players that will make up our 30. We're getting to the pointy end where we can start to do the work and start to build the connections and get the players involved in this terrific club."
