Football is full of sliding doors moments. Just ask the Fremantle Dockers.
If Lachie Weller hadn't requested a trade to Gold Coast, would Andrew Brayshaw be at the club?
What if Adelaide had taken Hayden Young instead of Fischer McAsey in the 2019 draft?
AFL recruitment, especially at the draft, is an element of good preparation and good luck.
The current Dockers list has been described as "pure" from a recruitment point of view, with no father-son selections, no free agents and no players taken with AFL concessions or free agent compensation picks.
And it all began in 2016.
"It was pretty clear the list was old, but finishing so high on the ladder in 2015, it's sort of hard to basically finish on top and then enter a rebuild phase," Fremantle's former national recruiting manager Brad Lloyd said.
"We entered [2016] with an old group, which is fine to have an older group, but you need to be getting the results.
And that wasn't evident through the start of '16."
The Dockers were winless until round nine that season, after winning 18 games the year before.
"Some decisions were made to reset again, which ended up in some pretty experienced players finishing up and the club going back to the draft," Lloyd said.
Starting over
Lloyd, who joined the Dockers in 2008, was no stranger to building a list — he was part of the recruitment team which put together Fremantle's 2013 grand final side.
In 2008 and 2009, Fremantle used 23 draft picks to bring together the core of the squad that would be competitive across the mid-2010s.
"We'd had a really good crack at it through '13, '14 and '15, and played in a grand final and in preliminary finals, but couldn't quite secure a premiership," Lloyd recalled.
"We had the oldest list and were now struggling on field [in 2016] and decided to sort of enter another build to get going again."
Lloyd believed a complete rebuild would take between six and eight years, and Fremantle embarked on drafting and trading in players it thought would deliver success.
It's been 10 years since that decision was made and the Dockers have resolutely stuck to the plan, though it hasn't been without some misses along the way.
The recruitment of Jesse Hogan, Shane Kersten and Cameron McCarthy, among others, didn't pan out, while some talented draftees such as Adam Cerra and Lloyd Meek now ply their trade at other clubs.
But under Lloyd and long-time recruiter David Walls, the club did bring in Luke Ryan, Andrew Brayshaw and Sam Switkowski, as well as Sean Darcy, who became the foundation of the club's list.
The stand-out draft
The Dockers' rebuild was slowly unfolding as the 2010s ended, but the 2019 draft accelerated it considerably.
Fremantle selected Hayden Young, Caleb Serong and Liam Henry with picks seven, eight and nine, before securing Michael Frederick at pick 61.
Mark Micallef was part of the Dockers' recruitment team that year.
Securing Young and Serong attracted much of the media attention at the time, though Micallef believed the selection of Frederick so late in the draft was equally important.
"You're trying to find the diamonds in the rough and you're looking for guys that could have a trait or an ability that not many others can see," he said.
"We thought Frederick was the right talent. He had a speed skill set that we really, really liked. He had a really good demeanour and a character.
"He had a good talent threshold, but he also had the work ethic and the character to back it up as well. So that's what really makes a back-end pick."
There were several other excellent drafts for Fremantle, including in 2021, which saw Jye Amiss, Matthew Johnson and Neil Erasmus selected, along with defender Karl Worner in that year's Rookie Draft.
Playing the long game
While the players selected by the Dockers in 2019 have become stars of the side, there was another future stud Fremantle wanted but knew they couldn't get in the draft.
Luke Jackson was described as a "unicorn" — a ruck who played like a midfielder — but he was slated to go very early in the draft.
Fremantle thought they could lure him back within a few seasons, and laid the groundwork in the build-up to the draft.
"We knew he was going to the top three, but we actually put a lot of groundwork into him that year saying, 'if you ever decide to come back, we want to be at the club of your choice,'" Micallef said.
"I think you always look at trades and stuff like that and people think it just happens within that trade period, but there's a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of resources that goes into that [future planning]."
Jackson and Shai Bolton both eventually returned to Western Australia as premiership players and are now vital cogs in Justin Longmuir's machine.
A special place
While both Micallef and Lloyd have long since moved on to different things, their time at Fremantle remains dear.
"Fremantle was a very special place. They were very good to me personally. Right from Steve Rosich and Chris Bond, the CEO and footy manager, and Steve Harris, who was the president at the time, to [his successor] Dale Alcock," Lloyd said.
"It is remote compared to the rest of the AFL, so they don't get a huge amount of turnover of staff.
"When you're watching them celebrate the other day [after the win over Sydney], you just see staff that have been there for decades. It's a very stable club that's operated in their own area.
"You see so many past players in the rooms and they're a very good club at looking after their people.
"I wish them nothing but the best and particularly for the recruiting team that I've worked closely with — David Walls and Dave McMullin and Ed McMullin and that team, wish them well and even their football manager, Joe Brierty."
Micallef was only at the club for one year, but he's enjoyed watching their success unfold.
"We set a plan and I think they sort of stuck to it, trying to get WA players back, and it worked really well.
"I loved my time at Freo, and Freo has some really special players and people involved in that footy club and even the fans, they just deserve it more than anyone.
"I really hope they get the job done on Saturday."
