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.

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Dylan Grimes (Pre-season selection)

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - SEPTEMBER 28: Dylan Grimes, David Astbury and Nick Vlastuin of the Tigers celebrate during the 2019 Toyota AFL Grand Final match between the Richmond Tigers and the GWS Giants at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 28, 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

The Tigers proved incredibly tough to pick, given the sheer amount of hits they've had in the pre-season and rookie drafts, but it's hard to go past Grimes.

While others in the honourable mentions category may have achieved as much or more, Grimes has been crucial to the Tigers success over the past 5 years.

A stalwart in the Richmond backline, he's overcome injury issues early in his career to be a reliable intercept and lockdown defender for the club.

A triple premiership player who has won All-Australian honours, his list of accomplishments could perhaps be subsidised by the scalps he has taken during his tenure in the Richmond backline, particularly in big games.

Honourable mentions: Nick Daffy (pick 49), Darren Gaspar (Pre-season selection), Chris Newman (pick 55), Jayden Short (Rookie seletion), Kane Lambert (Rookie selection)