SEASON 27: The Bulldogs Put Nick Austin in Charge of National Recruiting. What Did His Two Drafts Actually Produce?
Updated: 11 hours ago
RTSSG has published a new Season 27 investigation called SEASON 27: The Bulldogs Put Nick Austin in Charge of National Recruiting. What Did His Two Drafts Actually Produce?. The headline sounds simple. The evidence underneath it is not.
Nick Austin was the Western Bulldogs’ National Recruiting Manager across the 2018 and 2019 drafts. Those intakes eventually contained Bailey Smith, Rhylee West, Laitham Vandermeer, Ben Cavarra, Will Hayes, Lachie Young, Jordon Sweet, Buku Khamis, Cody Weightman, Louis Butler and Riley Garcia.
Put those names on a page and it is easy to start awarding credit. But how much of that record was top-end access? How much came through father-son or academy pathways? Which calls were genuine open-market judgements? Which late and mature-age bets failed? And what should be made of a club willing to trade up for an injured junior it clearly rated above the market?
There is another complication. When Austin left the Bulldogs, the club publicly praised not only player identification but changes to recruiting processes, reporting and list-management committee engagement. If Richmond has now brought him back for List Strategy and Player Acquisition, is that process record more important than the famous names attached to two old draft nights?
That is the question this feature follows all the way through the 2018 and 2019 intake — without pretending every good player was an Austin discovery or every failed pick proves the opposite.
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