MELBOURNE women’s coach Mick Stinear says the individual player interviews will be the most important component from this year’s NAB AFL Women’s Draft Combine.

Stinear said getting to know the players was critical in the lead-up to the NAB AFL Women’s Draft, which will be held later in October.

“It’s one thing to be able to watch a player in action throughout the year, but another to meet them and get to know them better and understand them,” he told melbournefc.com.au.

“It’s good to have a chat with them to see where they’re at with their football and whether we could see them fitting into the Melbourne environment – and if they’d be a quality Melbourne person.

“The quality of players are only improving and will continue to get better.”

Melbourne has six spots vacant on its 2018 AFLW list.

Four will be used at the NAB AFL Women’s Draft and two at the NAB AFL Women’s Rookie Draft, later in October.

Stinear said most of the available talent was at the NAB AFL Women’s Draft Combine, but he added that there was still “a number of players” outside of the camp in the mix.

He added that it had been a busy off-season for the club, watching the talent come through.

“Todd Patterson, our list manager, has done a super job, with [Melbourne recruiter] Anthony De Jong, who has also been across all of our talent identifying,” he said.

“The combine gives us a great opportunity to see those players up close and given the nature of Wednesday’s session – it’s a pretty full-on day and it’ll physically and mentally test a lot of players.

“There will be similar pressures faced in the AFLW season, so it’ll be a good test to see how some of the players stand up.”