Austin was pro scout in charge of finding the mature age players you listed not the kids.An interesting aspect to this year for me is having the new recruiting team and trying to figure out what they're all about after having Dal for all that time. I'm sure it's probably been discussed during the 8 months or so that I haven't been on but whatever.
Obviously Austin played a part in building the current dominant side in the comp, which is fantastic. During his time there they only had one top 10 pick, taking Nick Vlastuin at 9 in 2012. A pretty good pick, especially considering the players taken straight after him in the first round apart from probably Grundy who a lot of others overlooked as well. They also had some notable whiffs in hindsight in the first round, taking Ben Lennon ahead of the likes of Patrick Cripps and Corey Ellis ahead of the likes of Jake Lever. They've also had 0 success in drafting talls during that period, with the jury out on the more recent ones.
Their real success probably came from some of their recent mid to late picks, with Graham, Lambert, Butler, Broad and Castagna all now premiership players. Clearly he loves his small forwards too, which has become Richmond's trademark, and isn't afraid to use a first rounder on one. Good news for us as we could do with one. This leads me to think we'd probably take Rankine if he was there, I've got the sneaking suspicion that the previous regime might well have overlooked him in favour of a Smith or a King twin given the respective player types and what their personalities seem to be.