I’ve started producing 2026 pool footage so may as well get this one going.
My sense of it at this early stage is that the first round could be quite strong, but I’m not completely sold on the depth yet. Unfortunately the clear top two in the pool, Dougie Cochrane and Cody Walker, are both club tied, Dougie to Port and Cody to the Blues. There are other probable first round prospects that are also club tied like Aidan McCartney (Roos and Sydney) Garrison Kenh (Eagles) and Lucas Robinson (Freo) so its shaping to be another compromised one.
Here are a few of the more highly regarded prospects playing on grand final day in the U17 Futures game to whet your appetite. I’ll include the club tied kids in this first post but in general I won’t bother linking them here:
He’s the guy that I think would suit us best so fingers crossed. Mind you, with a year to go anything could happen. I probably said something similar about NHH at this time last year.
Overall though, I can see the strategy with targeting midfielders this year. Given two of the highest rated mids in Walker and Robinson are club tied, the top end of the open pool could end up being full of non midfielders - or at least more hybrid mids like Arki rather than inside bulls.
You might have just been able to discern from my choice of stat that he’s not yet shown confirmed senior form (or junior form that would get Brad to play him).
Ridley and Merrett might make accruing points in 2027 easier.
But assuming we finish near the bottom I can’t see them giving up our first, we still need too much A grade talent in multiple areas.
It will be interesting what they do if they end up with more 1st though, I could see them trading back as Hawthorn did to pick up extra picks the following year.
The other issue with getting points in 2027 is that they will be heavily diluted as Tassie is gonna push a lot of picks back, on the flip side to that though, teams may be having firesales to move those picks on.
The other way we might try getting 2027 is to dangle some carrots at Tassie’s either by trade or both their FA avenues.
For a bit of fun it’ll be good to look back at the ESPN top 10 early ratings theyve done for 2026. They’re saying theres some decent KPP depth though similarly mentioning a few are club tied. Suspect we end up with a top 4 pick next season personally.
