Selection five was the moment when the element of intrigue was added to the national draft.

In the 48 hours leading into the draft, word spread across the country that Melbourne, West Coast, Fremantle and Port Adelaide would take Jack Watts, Nick Naitanui, Stephen Hill and Hamish Hartlett respectively with the first four picks.

And speculation became reality within minutes of Andrew Demetriou officially opening up proceedings as the aforementioned quartet were picked up by their corresponding clubs.

Essendon was next in line with the fifth pick overall and with it came the most uncertainty to that point of the draft.

The Bombers had to decide between snaffling up the bargain of 2008 in impressive Subiaco midfielder Daniel Rich and selecting promising key position prospect Michael Hurley.

Rich would no doubt have been a welcome addition to Essendon's green midfield department but with the impending retirements of Dustin Fletcher, Matthew Lloyd and Scott Lucas over the next few years, Essendon's need to top up its key position stocks proved too strong and the first eyebrows were raised on Saturday morning when it decided to recruit Hurley.

Essendon list manager Adrian Dodoro elaborated on why the Bombers overlooked Rich.

"We were really confident about getting Hurley all the way through because we just needed a player of that type in our club," he said.

"He can play forward and back and we were looking at finalising the succession planning of talls into our club and he was the perfect fit for us."

"We've got some quality talls on the list now in young (Tayte) Pears and (Cale) Hooker and obviously Paddy (Ryder) but we just felt we wanted to get another one onto our list."

"The best thing about Michael Hurley is he can play forward, people don't realise that, we'll give him the opportunity to develop and (coach) Matthew Knights is pretty keen to play him fairly early next year I'd imagine."