Draft analysis: Giants gamble house money on Leek Aleer and his suspect ankle

And yet the story of Leek Aleer – taken by Greater Western Sydney at pick 15 on Wednesday night – was perhaps as noteworthy from a pure football perspective.

Aleer, 20, faced a long road back from a dislocated ankle and broken fibula suffered early in what would have been his draft year of 2019.

Ankle issues would ensue, as would foot stress fractures.

But after 15 months out of the game, Aleer worked his way back to become one of the standout intercept defenders outside the AFL this season, starring for Central Districts in the SANFL before making headlines with a record-breaking 107cm vertical leap at the AFL draft combine.

The ankle, however, remained a concern for several AFL clubs. There was a view among rivals on Wednesday night that GWS would have been able to wrangle a deal to trade down in order to take Aleer a bit later in the draft. And Giants recruiting chief Adrian Caruso accepted that GWS probably rated Aleer more highly than some other clubs.

Clubs usually trot out the same line about taking the “best available player” with their pick, especially early in the draft. So it was refreshing that Caruso acknowledged that once GWS had taken Finn Callaghan at pick No.3, the Giants looked to fill a particular need.

“One of the priorities with one of our first two picks was to draft a tall,” Caruso said. “Once it got to that second pick, we felt like we could just call out Leek, even though other clubs thought he might have gone later, we were always keen. He was the next best tall on our list and we feel like we can address that [area].

“He’s obviously got that enormous vertical leap. But we feel like his intercept game is something that we can really add to our backline. We feel like we’ve got some really good one-on-one defenders, but his ability to roll off his man and will help us chop off some balls.

“It was athleticism, it was fitting a list need, and it was also his character. He was one of the best interviews that we did across the year. He’s a kid who’s got a really good head on his shoulders. We know he’s going to put absolutely everything into his footy, get the most out of himself, and our strategy as a recruitment team has always been to recruit on character, and we feel like he’s been as good as any this year.”

Aleer’s ankle is the great unknown. There was a sense of surprise emanating from some opposition clubs on Wednesday night, who indicated that lines had been drawn through the backman following medical screenings. Caruso was philosophical. Yes, there is risk. But the Giants believe it is a risk worth taking.

“There were some concerns. We had a good discussion about it as a recruiting team,” Caruso said. “Some teams have probably gone the conservative end and some teams have probably gone the, ‘We’ll just deal with it’ and accepted it as a risk with any player. Our medical team have done a great job in the past with guys we’ve brought in who might have had question marks. You look back to Aiden Bonar and [Jye] Caldwell, they didn’t have any issues with us. We’ve got confidence with Leek that he can come in, get to work.”

The Giants had also been fans of Egypt-born Mac Andrew, also of South Sudanese extraction. Andrew was nabbed by Gold Coast at pick No.5, but Caurso said that Callaghan had ultimately been a clear standout at pick No.3.

Most selections in the first round were pushed back slightly after the respective bids of the Giants and Suns on father-son players Sam Darcy (Western Bulldogs) and Nick Daicos (Collingwood), both of which were matched after North Melbourne took Jason Horne-Francis at No.1.

On a night in which the first dozen or so picks went pretty much to script, the turning point in truth came almost 12 months ago. It was on draft night last year that Collingwood traded their future first-round pick to the Giants for picks 24, 30 and a future fourth-round selection.

The idea was reasonably sound at the time; the Pies keen to trade out of the 2021 first-round given their first pick would almost certainly be absorbed by an early bid for Daicos.

The key word here though is “almost”. What Collingwood list manager Ned Guy – no longer in that role – did not count on was the Magpies plummeting from semi-finalists in 2020 to second-last in 2021.

Had they kept their first-rounder, that would have been pick No.2. Theoretically they could have finished with Callaghan AND Daicos.

We will never know for sure whether North would have bid on Daicos at pick No.1 to prevent the Pies from doubling-up. That is the stuff of alternate universes. But what it does mean is that the Giants ended up with a bonus early selection.

Aleer is a gamble, but the Giants are playing with house money.