SUNS National Recruiting Manager Kall Burns believes the club is well-positioned to add to its exciting crop of young players with another top-10 pick in tonight’s NAB AFL Draft.
Speaking to SUNS Media, Burns said the club would look to draft the best available talent with Gold Coast’s current pick 5, but would be open to moving up or down the order for the right price.
“We’ll stay really open and flexible of what might come our way,” Burns said.
“We’ve had prior discussions with a number of clubs about some strategies moving in so we’ll keep open to all of those and see what unfolds on the night.”
Burns and his fellow recruiters have done a mountain of work leading into the draft in what was one of the hardest years to track potential talent due to the implications of COVID.
“It’s obviously challenging in the fact that Victoria didn’t get a chance to play a lot of football this year, but certainly the other states did,” Burns said.
“We put a lot of analysis work into Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and certainly here in Queensland and into the Northern Territory as well.
“We feel like we covered all bases and we still feel really prepared going into this year’s draft.”
Making things easier was the fact Gold Coast was able to pre-list four SUNS Academy prospects prior to the draft as part of the concessions handed to the club in 2019.
Alex Davies (Cairns), Joel Jeffrey (Darwin), Rhys Nicholls (Gold Coast) and Aiden Fyfe (Gold Coast) all joined the club on Wednesday morning from SUNS talent regions, and Burns said it was a credit to the outstanding work the SUNS Academy was doing.
“We believe the SUNS Academy is doing a fantastic job in harvesting those players,” Burns said.
“It gives us recruiters a really good opportunity to secure some top-end talent.
“It’s just been sensational for our football club and sets us up for a long time into the future.”
The NAB AFL Draft broadcast begins at 6pm AEST tonight on Fox Footy and Kayo, with the NAB AFL Rookie Draft taking place tomorrow morning at 11am.
