Why are we saying thanks Collingwood?
Without being able to recall the exact state in which Collingwood's list was in and the father-son drafting rules, it's a bit harder than I thought to rationalise their decision not to recruit Stewart.
At the end of 2012 Buckley started the purge. They had picks at 18, 19, 20, 38 and 94. From memory it has been reported that they made the decision not to take Stewart at all (as in not even with pick 38 or later), which is a bit strange.
From memory he was regarded as one of GWS' more speculative picks they took because they had more picks than they had other ideas. I read some draft profiles when we traded him in and the sum total of the comments was 'is tall and athletic, struggles to consistently impact a game forward and clunk a mark and looks better in defence'.
198cm athletes/projects will always get drafted but for every 1 which is drafted there would be 3 to 4 who don't make it.
Collingwood were still very much in the discussion as a premiership contender. I assume that what they meant when they told Stewart that they wouldn't take him was that they rated him somewhere from 38 to 94 and that they had no expectation that he would be available in that range.
It's a long way from being unforgivable to not have recruited Stewart in the above scenario. It may well have been different now given their ability to use a future pick, etc. There have been a number of tall athletes I've read about who we've overlooked on the third round and on balance more have flopped than not.
Fast forward 4 years from the 2012 draft and not much had changed for Stewart. It made perfect sense for us to add a 23 year old, 198cm mobile key forward (given that out key forward stocks lacked depth and mobility). Collingwood was never in the running.
We trade him in for pick 77 and within 12 months he'd already started playing footy that was a long way ahead of what we would have expected of him. Worsfold has been candid about expectations when he said that Stewart was offered a contract without the promise of best 22 footy.
How many times has a guy like him come good as a power forward let alone a guy who could genuinely 'play small' on a wing or at half forward? Stewart's now closer than not to fulfilling the promise of the 50 players who went before him and whose names we would not recognise. He'll probably get the next 50 drafted too.
I almost feel sorry for Collingwood. All of the character and athletic data farmed from sessions at the Hird academy would not have made us any more likely to know that he'd come good as a player.