AFL Draft 2022: Carlton’s incumbent wingmen face a fierce fight to retain their spots after the Blues loaded up at the position

They are nights about which supporters can dream.

New names aren’t tainted by past errors.

They all could be anything.

But the bit they don’t say out loud is that each player taken in the draft has taken someone else’s spot on an AFL list. Another young man who had previously been in this spot, dreaming of what could be, and much of the time leaving the caper unfulfilled.

This is just the way it is of course. Natural attrition and all that.

Another undercurrent to the draft is that each player drafted by definition begins outside their new club’s 22. They will all be eyeing the fastest way into the side; to take someone else’s spot.

Some are more natural fits than others.

Young South Australian tall Phoenix Foster shapes as a long-term prospect at Geelong, who took him with pick 52. One of the men holding him out of the Cats’ side is Tom Hawkins. There’s a strong chance Hawkins will have retired by the time Foster might genuinely be ready to play as a key forward in the AFL.

But other draft choices are shorter-term fixes. Fremantle took mature-agers Tom Emmett and Corey Wagner deep on Tuesday night, bringing some maturity to a list that lost plenty of experience through retirement and trades.

And then there is Carlton.

After a season of briefly dizzying heights and immense promise, the Blues slumped in the back half of the season to suffer the most heartbreaking of finals near misses. Perhaps no side has come closer without actually making the top eight. So expectations for 2023 are of finals, or else.

While there is of course always a balance between short-term and long-term goals, every move made by Carlton over the off-season had to be at least partly viewed through the prism of a team that should be contending for the premiership in the next year or two, with a host of stars having reached their prime years.

Long-term extensions for Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow have shored up the future, but the commitment to marquee talent limited the Blues’ ability to be heavy players in the trade period. To get Blake Acres from the Dockers on the cheap was a neat piece of business. Acres was coming off his best season in the league as a wingman.

As had been widely tipped in the lead-up to the draft, the Blues used their first pick to take Ollie Hollands, another outstanding runner who had forged his junior reputation on the wing.

OK, that’s two wingmen for the off-season. Enough?

It seemed not.

On Wednesday night Carlton then went for hard-running Dandenong wingman Jaxon Binns at pick No. 32. Jack Newnes had been delisted already, but suddenly Carlton has a glut of wingmen. It is a specialised role, albeit Hollands could in theory end up playing as an inside midfielder.

But when it comes to influxes of players in the same position in quick succession, this is right up there.

So, back to that point about spots in the 22.

Of all the players around the AFL from 2022 who remain on a list in 2023, it is hard to think any has had their job security hurt more than Lochie O’Brien. A top-10 draft pick five years ago, O’Brien was close to the scrap heap at the end of 2021 but survived. And then flourished. He played 19 AFL games this year in what was clearly his best season at the level.

But the system stops for no one. So O’Brien, along with fellow wingman Matt Cottrell, now face a hot fight to secure their respective spots in both the short and long-term. For Carlton it is a good problem to have. Competition for spots is always desirable, and hopefully the for Blues it is not undermined by injury as happened at times in 2022, when some positions ended up being filled almost by default.

As an aside, just 59 players were taken in the national draft this year, the same low tally as two years ago when list sizes had just shrunk. The slender sum this year backs up what recruiters had been saying privately for a while: this year’s draft pool was only modest, particularly in comparison to next year.

Clubs have baulked at giving guaranteed two-year draftee contracts, preferring to fill the bottom of their lists with one-year deals for mature-age talent to provide flexibility ahead of a stronger crop next year. That fewer than three-and-a-half players per club on average were taken is also in part down to the AFL’s decision to introduce several new recruitment mechanisms in recent years.

Ultimately, there are only so many list spots.