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What's in a name?

18/11/2009 4:43 PM


What's Free, Brown, Black and White with a Head, a Boddy, a pair of Gills and a Dick?

It also has a Fortune, a Riddle, a Snook, a Tutt, a Putt, two Pitts and a Potts - but no Joel Macdonald.

Give up? It's the list of nominations for Thursday night's 2009 AFL national draft containing 1367 names in all.

With just 81 vacancies on AFL club lists to be filled, the odds of making it are not good - just one in 16.87761713.

To put it another way, each nominee has a meagre 5.925 percent chance of just getting to first base, let alone forging an AFL career.

There are exceptions, of course.

The odds that Dandenong Stingrays midfielder Tom Scully and Sturt forward-onballer Jack Trengove will be drafted are hovering around 100-percent and would be more if that were possible.

Scully, the likely No.1, was pencilled-in at the top of Melbourne's wish list long before the club won a coveted priority pick, at which time Trengove's name was instantly locked in.

They're the best quinella since Let's Elope outlasted Better Loosen Up in their celebrated (two-horse) match race at Caulfield in October, 1992.

It's been speculated the Demons may want to tinker with the order so as to protect one or the other from the demands and pressures of being the nation's No.1 draftee.

But the situation this year is quite different from 2000 when the Saints nominated Nick Reiwoldt as No.1 ahead of Justin Koschitzke.

Riewoldt was as capable off the field as on it while Koschitzke was as crude and dry as the country he hails from in southern New South Wales.

There are no such distinctions, however, with Scully and Trengove, who is not to be confused with the Jackson Trengove drafted by Port Adelaide from the Calder Cannons at No.22 overall last year.

Both Scully and Trengove (Jack, not Jackson) have all the qualities necessary to live up to the role.

Bendigo midfielder Dustin Martin is the popular choice to go to Richmond with pick No.3 and Freo needs to look no further than down the coast to Peel Thunder for Anthony Morabito at No.4.

After that, the match-ups are less certain, but the names - Kane Lucas, Ben Cunnington, Gary Rohan, John Butcher, Jake Melksham, Lewis Jetta, Andrew Moore, Aaron Black, and Daniel Talia - keep recurring.

They're all set to be first-rounders and household names.

There are plenty in the draft who'll have a fair idea of what to expect from brothers, cousins and fathers who have gone before them including several - such as Derick Wanganeen, Nicholas Winmar, Sam Ezard, Charlie McAdam, Joe Groenewegen, Nick Westhoff and Cameron Kickett - whose names tell you all you need to know, as well as some whose don't, like Brent Wallace, son of Terry. Terry Wallace.

Other distinctive names on the list of 2009 nominees are Tendai Mzungu and Majak Daw, who're among a new generation of youngsters with an East African heritage set to add a new dimension to an old game, and Sandringham Dragons ruckman Max Gawn.

In 20 years time, no-one will remember Daw, but they'll all know Majak, and who isn't waiting for the first time that Gawn is caught in possession?

At the other end of the scale is Peel Thunder's Mitch Brown who may prefer not to be drafted by West Coast or Geelong, both of whom already have one on their books. A Mitch Brown, that is.

Then again, at draft time, you take what you can get.

The 1286 nominees who miss out on Thursday certainly would.

 
Photograph Copyright : Getty Images

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