'It was chaos': 10 years on from the AFL's craziest draft

As of October, it will have been 10 years since the inaugural AFL Women’s draft. The landmark moment that launched the competition and saw 145 players sorted into eight brand new teams in one chaotic afternoon.

At the time, it was hailed as a truly historic moment in the code’s history, and it remains so, but the sheer scale of the task is worthy of a proper reflection.

Following the enormous success of a representative women’s footy match in 2015, which out-rated the men’s AFL match from the previous night, the league made the call to push the big, green “GO” button and launch AFLW.

Instead of the competition starting in 2020, as was tentatively planned, suddenly we were all systems go for February 2017. Of course, this meant building an entire competition from scratch in effectively a calendar year. 

In the span of five months between June and October of 2016, the AFL decided upon the eight teams that would kick-start women’s footy at the top level. Those clubs then set about building football departments, coaching staffs and everything else required to build a top-level football club from scratch.

Those brand new departments and coaching groups then had to scour every corner of the country to work out how they would build their inaugural list of 30 players.

But it’s not like a standard draft pathway existed. The majority of players were playing in the sporadic local women’s competitions around the country. A fair chunk even crossed codes from other sports to get involved.

The AFL settled on eight clubs: four Victorian; Carlton, Collingwood, Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs; and added Fremantle, Adelaide, GWS and Brisbane as the other four.

Given the part-time nature of the competition, players had full control over which state(s) they wished to be drafted to. Most simply nominated where they lived, meaning the four Victorian teams battled over the same local talent pool.

And it’s within those four teams and the 120 players who made those lists up where the true chaos of the next few months would stem.

Paul Groves, the inaugural coach of the Western Bulldogs, remembers those months across 2016 as a bit of a blur as he scoured vision from the VWFL and used the final exhibition game, which he coached, as a trial run to sort through raw talent. 

“It certainly was a bizarre time,” Groves told Nine.com.au.

“To be honest, I went and got magnets made up of about 150 to 200 players with their details on it, and we were using them in my office on the back of a filing cabinet, the back of this big cabinet thing that we pulled out, with all the magnets sorted into ranks.

“We were trying to rank players firstly in positions, their main position that we think they’ll play, but then also giving them a sort of overall talent pool. It wasn’t an easy task.”

While teams scrambled to get a feel for who should be drafted where in October, players had to do the opposite, making themselves visible to recruiters, available for interviews and performing at local level - all while working everyday jobs.

For Steph Chiocci, who would go on to become Collingwood’s inaugural captain, the sudden timeline jump from a 2020 launch to 2017 changed everything.

Chiocci was one of the stars of the local Victorian Women’s Football League for Diamond Creek, but had been overlooked by the four Victorian AFL clubs as a marquee player, meaning she was heading into the draft like everyone else.

“It was a bit of a whirlwind,” she said.

“All of a sudden it’s (AFL boss) Gil McLachlan going, ‘yep, 2017, not 2020,’ and I’m thinking, ‘you beauty, I’m not too old. I’m still probably a chance, along with a lot of my Diamond Creek teammates’.

“It was a whirlwind because it happened so quickly. Like, there wasn’t time to sort of sit back and think, OK, ‘what does this look like for our future’, because at that point it was like, still playing local footy, you represent Victoria biannually in those competitions that we did, and then all of a sudden, there’s talk of this AFLW draft.

“All of a sudden it becomes like a business and all of these people you know are now employed by clubs and you’re getting told one thing and then you’re interviewing with Carlton and then the Bulldogs are saying ‘if you’re here at this pick we’ll take you here’.”

Each of the teams got to sign two marquee players to their list outside the draft system, as well as priority players as the next step below that.

This saw the likes of Daisy Pearce join Melbourne, Ellie Blackburn at the Bulldogs and former Matildas goalkeeper Brianna Davey sign with Carlton.

But the remainder of each team’s list would be assembled on draft day on October 12, 2016, just five months before the season would launch.

Dozens of players were in attendance at the event in Melbourne as all eight teams assembled for what was effectively the equivalent of drafting an entire playing base from scratch.

“The draft itself went for quite a while, we were drafting 150 players after all. Once it started we were all in the same room and very close to each other, not like how it is now at Marvel Stadium,” Groves said.

“Then when you do make a pick, you get an, “ah, that’s a great pick, well done. We were going for her next”. To be honest, it was like doing a Supercoach draft where you’re drafting all the players and you get all your mates around and you’re all like, “I was going to pick her next, I was going to pick her next”. That was a bit like what it was.

“The (non-Victorian) teams were sort of in their own bubble. They had their own lists and we’re sitting around the tables. Fremantle and those teams are basically just reading off their playing list in order (because of the state-based draft), they’re not so much drafting.

“Whereas we’re sitting there waiting, ‘what are Melbourne going to do here, what are Carlton picking’. There was a fair bit of a juggle with that for us.”

Chiocci knew she was going to get drafted, she simply didn’t know which of the four Victorian clubs would snap her up and when.

For others however, the wait was excruciating.

Veteran Victorian midfielder Katie Loynes was one who was forced to wait. Already in her early 30s, she was rehabbing a second torn ACL across 2016 and in the lead-up to the draft.

Because of the injury, she found herself on the fringes of some draft boards and crossed off others.

Loynes opted to watch draft day from home, hoping her name would be read out, describing it as a “surreal” experience.

“I didn’t go to the draft and I was meant to be teaching that day, and I purposely stayed home with mum and I remember just watching the names come up on the TV, and it was very surreal to think at some stage hopefully I was going to get called out,” Loynes said.

“You’re always feeling for the people who were disappointed, and there were so many that were actually in the rooms that day that missed out.”

Loynes had to wait until Carlton read her name out at pick 110, with the club she grew up supporting ending the agony.

But she admits being overlooked a grand total of 109 times did put a chip on her shoulder going into the first season.

“I was only five months post surgery and clubs were really trying to test the strength of my knee and apparently a lot of those fitness tests I didn’t pass, so I think I got crossed off a few lists. It was like I had a mark against my name,” Loynes said.

“I won’t shy away from it, there was a part of your ego that does get slighted about what could have been (without the torn ACL). I felt like I was continually proving people wrong, and it was a real motivator for me with training and just mindset going into games.”

Chiocci joined Collingwood at pick 11, or effectively pick six of the Victorian crop.

“I was there with my mum and dad. It was a lovely atmosphere in the room, a lot of nervous energy. Nobody knew what to expect. Ignorance is bliss,” she laughed.

“We got through the first round, the first 10 picks, and I was getting pretty nervous. A tiny part of me was pretty pumped because Carlton had said if I was there (at pick 14) they would take me and I grew up a big Blues fan.

“Obviously when Collingwood read out my name at pick 11 I was over the moon and overcome with emotion, if you can find the vision you can see I was a bit of a sook.”

One she had been drafted, Chiocci’s attention turned to her Diamond Creek teammates, like Loynes, who had to wait as the hours went on and the draft unfolded.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking for a lot of people and a very, very long night,” Chiocci confirmed.

“I think we ended up going back up to the Glasshouse as it was then and had some drinks and some food and (Collingwood president) Eddie McGuire was overseas and he called in and was on loudspeaker to all of us, and he said two things: “You’re part of the Collingwood family now, you’ll always be part of the Collingwood family”; and, “we bloody hate Carlton,” and that was his two things. So, that was a funny experience for me and my Carlton-supporting parents!”

With hindsight, it’s a difficult draft to assess. Many of the top names delivered, but the sheer responsibility of building each list from scratch made it an unenviable task. 

Quite a few of the competition’s guns fell into the fifties or even the hundreds. There aren’t many sporting drafts around the world where you find a sleeper gem at pick 137, where current Collingwood captain Ruby Schleicher landed.

Loynes would quickly establish herself as one of Carlton’s best players, winning their best and fairest in 2018 and being named captain of the club in 2020.

Groves feels the league handled a difficult initiation process well, despite how quickly everything was thrown together.

“To be honest, there’s not a whole heap there that... you want to say, “oh, it could have been a little bit more professional, could have been this,” but it was like this was completely new,” the 2018 premiership coach said.

“The biggest challenge was getting girls who have just played basically local women’s footy, or playing VWFL and all of a sudden, we’re chucking you on TV, here’s the standard, here’s where you need to get to in one six-week pre-season before Christmas and then here you go, you’re going to start at the end of January.

“So that was challenging, but the girls loved it because it was all so new and acknowledging them a little bit, which is great.

“It was chaos for me too. It was like, I’ve gone from teaching year 10 PE to three weeks later drafting a squad of 30 girls to play on television, and I was still coaching Monash Blues at the time as well into a finals series. So it was a pretty interesting period, and one I’m better for as well, definitely.”