well Lenny Hayes is clearly the better player thats what i mean and he's from the home state.
Its not as easy as that. It's all well and good to 8 and half years down the track to say the the Swans should of selected Hayes with one of our 3 First Round Picks in the 1998 Draft because he was the local boy and he has gone on to do great things, but the clubs line of thinking back then was that he would be a second round selection AT BEST and we didn't have one of those to use because we had used our second round pick on Heath James under the Father Son Rule.
So in 1998 we traded for early draft picks so we could get Fitzgerald (who was wanted by Collingwood, the two SA clubs and ourselves) to develop as a Key Forward looking forward to life without Lockett and Fosdike considered the best midfielder in the draft pool after Headland that year with Picks 3 and 4.
After that we had Pick 8 to use on another midfielder which Hayes was NEVER considered for and we went with the Best available player in Jude Bolton over Marc McVeigh who was considered to be the Best prospect from NSW that year. Not everything turns out the way you plan it, but thats the way the draft works.
So regardless of how you paint this draft, Hayes WOULD NEVER of been drafted by the Swans at Pick 3 or 4 because we targeted Fitzgerald and Fosdike with those picks and if we did take the local kid at Pick 8 it would of been Marc McVeigh who was concidered the better NSW product that year and was selected at pick 9 after we took Jude at pick 8.
St kilda even said they couldn't believe there luck with hayes they thought they would have Bolton, Bolton being a saints supporter correct me if im wrong.
Of course St Kilda would say they couldn't believe their luck, they got the they targeted and in the end they were really the only club who pushed that hard for him. They could of got him at 22, but they didn't want to risk it, not knowing how other clubs were thinking regarding Hayes and took him early and got the reward from what has turned out to be a very poor draft. As for Bolton being a Saints fan, news to me I've always though he was an Essendon supporter growing up.