On the eve of the 2014 AFL draft, Gold Coast Suns List & Strategy Manager Scott Clayton said this year’s edition of the draft is the most even in the game’s history.

Since its inception in 1986, the draft has thrown up plenty of surprises and Clayton believes due to the evenness of this year’s crop there is set to be a few eyebrows raised on Thursday night.

“I reckon it’s really, really even. I’m excited by it, but it is very even,” Clayton told SUNS TV on Wednesday.

“That’s sort of borne out by the fact that some clubs would like to trade back, they’d rather have two picks in the first round instead of one and move back to get it.

“It is a very even bunch and I’m actually expecting some surprises on draft night.”

The SUNS recruiting team has tracked this year’s potential draftees for two to three years, with some players emerging in the under-16 national championships in 2012.

Clayton revealed his recruiting team has watched each potential recruit more than 20 times each, as well as conducting a handful of different assessment methods to determine the quality of this year’s draft crop.

“Players that we’re evaluating we’ve seen perhaps 20 to 25 times live,” Clayton said.

“We’ve met parents, we’ve interviewed, we’ve done countless reference checks, we’ve been to a lot of testing, we’ve done psychological profiling, we’ve had just hundreds of flights around Australia to do so.

“We’ve got so much information, people would be surprised.”