‘If it was that easy…’ Inside draft steals and mega trades behind Cats’ ‘moneyball’ rise

Geelong’s utterly remarkable list build is set to see it line up for Saturday’s AFL grand final with just four of its own first-round draft picks, with eight of its best 23 players arriving at the club as mature-aged recruits.

The Cats have long proven themselves the masters of finding draft diamonds in the rough, also making shrewd trade and free agency calls to ensure they remain in perpetual flag contention.

And regardless of which route these players took to get to Kardinia Park, the winning culture and laid-back lifestyle has always been a key part of the club’s luring pitch.

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After all, Chris Scott has incredibly led the hoops to preliminary final weekend in 10 of his 15 years in charge, as well as his fourth grand final this weekend, and two premierships to date — which could well become three.

Foxfooty.com.au examines into the nuts and bolts of the absolute machine that is Geelong’s list management with insights from former Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley and two-time Cats flag-winner Cameron Mooney, ahead of Saturday’s blockbuster flag-decider.

TOP PICKS ARE OVERRATED!

The Cats certainly haven’t forged an identity for making moneyball picks at the top of drafts. Just consider the unfulfilled careers of Billie Smedts (no.15 pick in 2010), Jackson Thurlow (no.16 in 2012), Darcy Lang (no.16 in 2013), Nakia Cockatoo (no.10 in 2014) and Cooper Stephens (no.16 in 2019).

After whiffing on Cockatoo in 2014, the Cats didn’t make another first-round draft selection until they snapped up speedster Jordan Clark at no.15 in 2018, whom they ultimately traded on to Fremantle for Pick 22 — which became ruck Toby Conway — in 2021.

Overall, since the 2014 national draft, Geelong has made just six selections in the first round — Jordan Clark (2018), Stephens (2019), Sam De Koning (no.19 in 2019), Max Holmes (no.20 in 2020), Jhye Clark (no.8 in 2022) and Connor O’Sullivan (no.11 in 2023) — and four of them will trot out on Saturday afternoon at the MCG.

And dashing midfielder Holmes, who missed out on the club’s 2022 grand final belting of Sydney due to injury, will finally get his chance at premiership redemption.

Instead, the Cats — with 40-year recruiting virtuoso Stephen Wells leading the charge — have done, and continue to do, their most industrious list work by extracting lesser-known names from places nobody thinks to scout and turning them into week-to-week senior contributors.

A third of Geelong’s best team is made up of mature-age recruiting success stories — Mark Blicavs, Mark O’Connor, Tom Stewart, Tom Atkins, Brad Close, Oisin Mullin, Shaun Mannagh, and Lawson Humphries.

Why have the Cats consistently targeted mature-aged prospects? And how have they been able to develop and get the best out of them like few other rivals?

“I think they (the Cats) are probably as good as anyone at identifying the way they want to play. So, all of this is in planning, I would have thought,” Buckley told Foxfooty.com.au.

“Identify the way they want to play, the type of characteristics that they want to add, whether it’s a skillset or a personality trait, (a) position.

“And then they bring them into their environment, and they know their environment so well that they (say) ‘OK, this person, this athlete can come in and just naturally develop in our system, and we think that their skillsets are going to be able to help us play the type of footy that we think is going to win in September’.

“They’ve done that really well. I also believe that the leadership and the locker room become really important … I just think Geelong trusts that they’ve got solid leadership — (Patrick) Dangerfield, obviously back in the day you had (Joel) Selwood. And obviously you’ve got to make that transition, but (Mark) Blicavs, (Tom) Atkins — just guys that are good, solid leaders and individuals that want to win and are prepared to sacrifice for ‘team’. That’s probably the consistent (theme).

“So, you come in as a 25-year-old and you think ‘OK, if that’s what’s rewarded, and this is what’s been driven, well then that’s what I’ll be’. So, they’ve done really well.”

Scott was asked at Friday’s joint press conference why his side has been able to stay at the top of the ladder by topping up with rookie sliders and mature-age picks — and why the Cats do it better than any other club.

“It’s a complicated answer, that one — I can’t answer it in a thorough way here. The part that I would highlight is that a lot of what we’ve done has been done out of necessity,” he began on Friday morning alongside skipper Patrick Dangerfield and Brisbane pair Chris Fagan and Harris Andrews.

“It’s not as if we sat back and think ‘this is the optimal route for any team to evolve’. It’s just, we’ve played the cards that we’ve been dealt. So, look, I think a lot gets spoken about with the way … I think culture is an overrated and overused term when describing footy departments these days.

“But I think the key part is we’ve never fallen in love with ourselves, and we’ve never thought that we were better than any other club. We have just come up with a system that we think works for us. And maybe it’d be difficult to replicate, because we have a slightly different set of circumstances.

“And we’ve got great admiration and respect for what Brisbane have done, but we’re both here via different paths. And we respect their path and what they’ve done, but we do acknowledge that the way we’ve done it, we think is unique to us.”

Floated the idea that the Cats perhaps target more mature-age players because they’re further along in their development, and that helps a team like Geelong — which is seemingly always contending — in not having to bide their time while younger prospects develop, Buckley said: “Yeah, I think there is a little bit of that in the philosophy.

“But if it was just that easy, then every other club would be doing it.

“Shaun Mannagh was available to anyone and everyone, same as (Dayne) Zorko was for a period, same as Brody Mihocek was for a period.

“So, there are late-maturers, or people that take a little bit more time to get there, or different things are going on in their life.”

Buckley used Stewart, who was overlooked in four drafts and starred for the VFL Cats in 2016 before being offered his first AFL contract, as a prime example of his contention.

“For Tom Stewart, who was in the under-16s Country academy, and his parents, he was going through home stuff, and the kid that I saw then was a long way off — he didn’t make our final team, but then six years later, he comes through as a somewhat mature-age, he would’ve been 21 or 22, and then he’s ready,” Buckley said.

“So, I think maybe Geelong are prepared to throw the net a little bit wider, keep their eyes on a little bit more of a catchment area from a recruiting or talent perspective, somehow, compared to an opposition club, and maybe they just back their judgement a little bit more — their processes, and seeing things other clubs don’t see.

“But absolutely, it’s a moneyball approach. And they’ve got some bang for buck. They’ve demonstrated being able to make some calls and take some risks on some players for low cost to see what they can turn them into.”

Buckley explained that the Cats’ ability to hit big on low-cost players lent itself to having the financial capital to chase the competition’s big names.

“And once you’ve done that once or twice, three or four times, then you’ve got some validation … It’s a pretty good way of adding potential players to your program that don’t cost you a lot if it doesn’t work, but if it does, as you can see with some of their guys, you think … ‘that puts us in a pretty good position’,” he said.

“(They’re thinking) ‘We haven’t spent too much of our draft capital, we’re not spending too much of our TPP (total player payments), we can go and get a Jeremy Cameron, or we can go and get a Bailey Smith.

“Or, we can go and get someone that we really think is going to make a significant difference to where we might have to invest a little bit more of your capital to get, but we can do that because we’ve got these moneyball picks that we’re prepared to gamble with a little bit to see whether we can find two or three or four or five blokes who can play important roles for low cost’ — and they’ve been able to do that.”

THE LIST WINS TO PROPEL FLAG TILTS

The game’s most versatile weapon, Sunbury’s Mark Blicavs, was the no.54 rookie draft pick in 2011 and was Category B rookie-listed for the first three years of his career. He’s since gone on to play 294 games, win two best-and-fairest awards and earn an All-Australian nod in a premiership-winning 2022 campaign.

The off-season of 2016 saw the Cats add five future premiership players, including current stars Tom Stewart, Jack Henry, Zach Guthrie and Mark O’Connor, as well as the now-retired Zach Tuohy.

Stewart was famously the no.40 draft pick as a 23-year-old, and while he devastatingly won’t play on Saturday due to a concussion, the five-time All-Australian has been integral to the Cats’ cause for close to a decade.

Henry and Guthrie were both rookie draft picks, nos.16 and 33 respectively, and have since combined for 290 games in what remains a rock-solid defence.

O’Connor, meanwhile, was an unregistered player selection from County Kerry in Ireland.

Local product Gryan Miers, who began his career as a purely forward-half weapon before integrating into the guts as one of the competition’s more damaging score-involvement players, was the no.57 national draft pick in 2017.

A year later, Geelong again snapped up a rookie draft gem in Tom Atkins — another success story from the club’s VFL program — who’s arguably been the Cats’ most unheralded midfield star this season. And in 2019, it was pressure forward Brad Close who arrived as the no.14 rookie pick.

And the next year, the Cats only had to spend Pick 33 on Shannon Neale, their spearhead key forward of the future.

Electric winger Ollie Dempsey arrived in 2021 — club great Andrew Mackie’s first off-season in charge of list management operations after assuming the reins from Wells — and quickly became another stark list triumph for Geelong, with the no.13 rookie draft pick incredibly going on to win last year’s Rising Star award.

There’s a pretty good argument to be made that Dempsey has been Mackie’s biggest hit yet since being elevated to list boss, but the 2023 off-season wins give the blonde-haired livewire a run for his money.

Expert tagging speedster Oisin Mullin was snagged in the same off-season as Dempsey and has become the latest in a growing line of Irish successes at Geelong. Both aim to claim their first premiership medallions on Saturday.

The 2023 national draft bore delicious fruits for the Cats, who landed VFL superstar Shaun Mannagh with the no.36 pick — a selection they attained from Essendon after trading down earlier in the intake to nab key defender O’Sullivan; another starter on grand final day.

It was just a year earlier that Mannagh was slotting majors for Werribee in the VFL decider, and now he’ll look to snag one or two against the Lions on footy’s biggest stage.

And as if O’Sullivan and Mannagh weren’t enough, at no.63, the Cats plucked smooth-moving mid-sized defender Lawson Humphries out of Swan Districts.

TRADE WINS AND ‘DESTINATION CLUB’ STRATEGY

Geelong hasn’t typically been a blockbuster trade player over the years, save for luring Patrick Dangerfield and Jeremy Cameron home in 2015 and 2020 respectively — as well as Gary Ablett in 2017.

And while ‘Danger’ and ‘Jezza’ continue to be driving forces for the Cats, it’s also been the more under-the-radar trade deals and signings that have propped the club up.

Trading for Rhys Stanley in 2014 has, whether you want to admit it or not, paid decade-long dividends, and the great surviving ruck is set to return to Scott’s line-up on Saturday.

Geelong took a chance on delisted free agent Tyson Stengle in 2021 and helped turn him into an All-Australian goalsneak, then the next year the club traded with Gold Coast for Jack Bowes and the no.7 pick (Jhye Clark) in a shrewd ‘salary dump’ deal.

And last year, the Cats offered Jack Martin a lifeline after persistent injury derailed his progress at both the Suns and Carlton — and while his year started slowly, it’s panned out handsomely for the versatile utility.

Then, as Buckley alluded to, comes the big fish, with Geelong parting with a first-round pick for Bailey Smith in a move which has been retrospectively looked upon as genius, with Smith earning his maiden All-Australian blazer and tying with Gold Coast captain Noah Anderson for the Coaches’ Association Player of the Year award.

“It just shows where the club is at,” triple premiership forward Cameron Mooney told Foxfooty.com.au. “I came down to the club in 2000 and no one wanted to go to Geelong. We were the laughing stock down the road from Melbourne — the old ‘Handbaggers’.

“Twenty-five years later, they’re one of the biggest destination clubs in the AFL.

“I say this all the time: It is the greatest place to bring up a young family. You’re just out of the Melbourne hub, but you still get that Melbourne feel. Geelong is a beautiful place, if you want to live coastal or (on) farm land, it’s 20 minutes away from the club.

“A traffic jam will cost you six or seven minutes, not an hour and six or seven minutes, as it does in Melbourne.”

Speaking to Foxfooty.com.au in the 2025 pre-season, five-time All-Australian defender Tom Stewart remarked that the Cats would continue to “utilise” the club’s geographical appeal when attempting to lure rival talent — having done so when facilitating Smith’s arrival from the Western Bulldogs.

“Some people do like the hustle and bustle of Melbourne; they like being a part of it, and being in there is for some,” he said.

“But those that want to have an escape, if you will, and the ability to escape that bubble that is quite intense at times in Melbourne … it’s something that we’re going to utilise down here.

“That’s what makes our community unique and what makes our club unique is we do have (a) quieter nature … down here, compared to a big city like Melbourne.”