Your club's biggest draft steal of the AFL era

Three Brownlow medallists and a bevy of BnF winners, this list is packed with diamonds that emerged from the rough.

STAFF WRITER | July 9, 2021 - 2:19pm

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One of the great exercises when talking footy is to debate your club's best draft steals. Sure, high draft picks are great, but everyone knows it's much easier to hit a winner with a top 10 selection than it is with a pick in the 50's. Or in the Rookie Draft for that matter.

So we've decided to put together something for you to refer to next time the debate springs up over a couple of beers.

For the purposes of this exercise, anyone drafted before pick 40 is ineligible and we've decided to keep it in the AFL era. This is by no means a complete list, every year tosses up several gems and sadly, we can't include them all.

So without further distraction, here are our biggest draft steals for every club in the competition.

North Melbourne

Brent Harvey (pick 47)

29 May 1999: Brent Harvey, number 19 for Victoria in the rooms with trophy and medal after being presented with the E.J Whitten Medal, after the State of Origin match between Victoria and South Australia, played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia. Victoria defeated South Australia. Mandatory Credit: Mark Dadswell/ALLSPORT

This one is extremely straightforward, despite the Roos very good success with some of their latter picks throughout the 90's.

'Boomer' is the games record holder, having played an astonishing 432 times at AFL level, kicking over 500 goals as well. Harvey was an incredible servant to the North Melbourne Football Club, giving his all right to the very end.

When he retired he was arguably still in their top 3 players, such was his ability. Captain of the club from 2009-2001, he was a four time All-Australian, five time B&F winner and named in the North Melbourne team of the century.

'Boomer' has to go down as one of the greatest value picks from any AFL draft.

Honourable mentions: John Blakey (Traded for pick 68), David King (pick 46), Peter Bell (Pre-Season selection), Byron Pickett (Pick 67), Andrew Swallow (pick 43)