In his press statement Hamish suggested that Pedlar " .... got injured and missed later in the year which wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened, because he was probably a little bit under the radar for a few but not for us." This sounds to me like a Hamish special. And I am happy to go with it.
Despite sounding like a SA-phobe I would also rather he chose Poulter over Berry, but what do I know?
I was probably in a similar boat re Poulter/Berry, nothing against Berry, I just really liked the potential in Poulter, but seeing the reaction of him and his mates to being drafted does endear him a fair bit, unlike Tanner "just been selected as tribute for the Hunger Games" Bruhn ...
Regarding drafting locals, I think this year is probably more coincidence than significant change in drafting policy. This was a strong SA draft to start with, I believe this group won their respective U16 Champs, then combine this with lack of exposed victorian form and it suddenly became very easy to select local. Plus we had 2x NGAs.
Personally I do think we need to work harded to push closer to a 50-50 SA/Non-SA talent though. I don't think we have to significantly prioritise SA talent in our draft order, but I think we do need to work harded to manouvre our picks into positions to get the better SA talent (Which I think we did do with Cook and were looking at with Pedlar, but realised we wouldn't get him if we had moved).