The hard work has just begun for AFL draft hopefuls

Not one of these teenagers has played a game at the highest level, yet are already household names for anyone with a passing interest in the AFL.

On the undeveloped shoulders of each of the aforementioned young men – boys, really – rests the hopes of an entire club and tens of thousands of supporters.

Each one is tipped to figure prominently when 18 football clubs gather in Adelaide tonight for the annual AFL national draft.

Such is the intense media scrutiny in the months leading up to the draft that already supporters feel they know these players intimately.

Walk into any pub tonight and you are guaranteed to hear beer-sipping patrons arguing over who their club should recruit in order to achieve premiership glory. Feeling empowered by the knowledge gleaned from consuming a glut of player profiles, phantom drafts and shaky video footage posted on YouTube, they will pass judgement.

The most promising prospects are already burdened with tags such as “the next Lance Franklin”, “the next Nat Fyfe”, or “the next Gary Ablett”.

Some will live up to and perhaps even exceed these lofty expectations. But for the majority, their time in the big league will be brief. The reality is that despite all the physical and psychological testing, training and developing, drafting remains an inexact science.

It is worth remembering the average length of an AFL career is just six years and of the 70-odd names called out tonight, just 4 per cent will go on to play 200 or more games.

Most of the players drafted tonight will quickly drift into obscurity. Others will merely live on for decades to come by virtue of unkindly being dubbed “draft flops”.

And then there is another batch of players who will be overlooked entirely in this year’s draft, only to take the road less travelled towards brilliant careers.

Whatever the fate of this year’s draft hopefuls, the AFL must ensure when these players are eventually kicked to the kerb they have the required skills to forge a second career.

It is the least this industry can do.

- Ross Tyson, deputy editor