2024 Telstra AFL Draft: What you need to know
The 2024 Telstra AFL Draft kicks off tonight in Melbourne with the Swans having two first round picks in this year's draft.
The 2024 Telstra AFL Draft kicks off tonight with this year's draft set over two big nights in Melbourne.
The Sydney Swans have two first round picks on the opening night of proceedings with picks 19 and 22.
Rounds 2 onwards will then follow on Thursday evening with the Swans holding picks 44, 59, 85 and 91 in their hand. The Rookie Draft will conclude the three-day Draft period on Friday afternoon.
The 2024 Telstra AFL Draft will be broadcast live on Wednesday and Thursday nights on AFL.com.au from 6.45pm and Fox Footy and Kayo Sports from 7pm with updates also across Sydney Swans social media channels.
The Draft is the pointy end of work from the Sydney Swans recruiting team, led by Chris Keane, the club's Head of List Strategy & Player Personnel. Keane and National Recruiting Manager Kinnear Beatson as well as Recruiting & Talent Analyst John Giramondo have a couple of big days ahead and are confident and excited about adding further talent to the Swans list.
Keane, who spoke to the Daily Telegraph on Thursday said:
"We are happy with where we sit at the back part of the first round, having a couple of picks on night one, and we think there's a good bunch of talent there. I think it's been well publicised that it is quite a deep draft.
"The likely play is certainly for our first selection at 19, we'll take what we deem is the best available on our board, and then we'll look at different scenarios after that to have a level of flexibility there.
"There's clearly some really good small and medium forwards, but there's four or five key forwards and key position players in general, which has probably added to the depth of the draft, to be honest.
"I think every club will always have holes on their list that they'd like to fill but at the end of the day, we do have a high level of confidence in this group that we've currently got, and we feel like we've got a good amount of talent on our list, but we'd love to add to it.
"List management goes through a number of different factors, and one of them is retaining the talent that you've currently got, and that's what we did with the key signings of Errol Gulden, James Rowbottom, Will Hayward, Ollie Florent and Logan McDonald. We were rapt to be able to secure those guys. That's always been one of the key strategies."
