594 Names, One Giant Spreadsheet: The Draft Pool Lands

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Five hundred and ninety-four names. That’s the nominee list for this year’s AFL National Draft, released this week, and I want you to sit with that number for a second — because somewhere in that spreadsheet is a kid who’s going to kick four goals in a prelim in 2031, and somewhere else is a kid who’s going to get delisted after eleven games and go and sell real estate in Ballarat. Nobody knows which is which yet. That’s the whole charm of it, and also the whole cruelty of it.

I’ve been covering this caper long enough to know that a nominee list is basically a lottery ticket with a guernsey number pencilled in. Most of these 594 will never hear their name read out on draft night. A good chunk won’t even get a sniff from a list manager’s assistant’s assistant. But every single one of them has put their hand up, which takes a certain amount of nerve — or delusion, depending on the player and depending on how many VFL games they’ve actually played.