Day 1 - Tuesday, September 28

THE COMBINE (formerly known as the Draft Camp) started a bit earlier than normal this year.

We started at 2.30pm and finished at 9.30pm and arrived back at our hotel around 10pm.

In the past, we haven’t had scheduled player interviews on Tuesday, but it was really good to have them this year.

One of the prime purposes of the camp is to get as many interviews done, because all of the players are there.

Dean Bailey was one of the few AFL coaches up here in Canberra on the first day. He was certainly putting in the hard yards, although most of the coaches arrived last night.

Recruiters Gary Burleigh and John Turnbull were also in the meetings, along with Ian Flack (our professional development manager) and Darren Farrugia, who assists in IT and recruiting.

Darren was also our logistical man in terms of finding the players and organising the interviews.

It’s a really big week, with long hours.

But we were able to knock over 12 interviews on our first day and we got a good cross-section of players, who may or may not be in the frame for pick No.12.

We also got a good blend of players around the pick No.32 mark.

So what did we find out?

The players that we interviewed were impressive. There weren’t any huge concerns over the group - the quality was pretty good.

Some of the interviews we did included Kieran Harper, Billy Smedts, Jack Darling, Brodie Smith, Blayne Wilson, Tom Lynch and Lucas Cook.

They have been some of the highly-touted players in this draft.

We’re not sure who is going to come through at No.12, so it’s a lot less predictable for us earlier in the draft than in recent years.

We tried to drill down a little bit with some of the players. Some of the players were well rehearsed in what they said, so we tried to break down that barrier.

We want the player to be relaxed, because we want good honest feedback.

Some of the players are guarded, so when you feel that occurs, it’s important to make sure you can still get what you want. This might mean that some interviews run longer than the allotted 20 minutes.

We generally do follow up with players and head interstate, if they are outside of Victoria.

Some might be a higher priority, so you tend to analyse those interviews deeper. Then, what more do we need to find out?

Interviewing is a completely different aspect to the camp, aside from the fitness testing, for example.

To have completed 12 interviews by Tuesday night is a really good result.

We hope to complete 40 to 45 interviews this year and gather as much information as we can.