Fremantle Football Club drafting and trading history

In recent years, however, they have been successful in finding good players with late round and rookie list selections.

[3] Smart was the Claremont Football Club colts (under 19) coach in 1994, and wasn't appointed until near the end of the 1994 WAFL season on 1 September 1994, just 2 months before the team started training.

[9] Fremantle had flown the 18-year-old McLeod and his father to Perth for an interview, but none of the coaching or recruiting staff had actually seen him play, despite McLeod having played in a premiership for Port Adelaide Football Club in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) a few weeks earlier.

McLeod was puzzled and insulted when Fremantle coach Gerard Neesham asked him to stand up to see how tall he was.

The result of this short meeting was that he was traded to Adelaide in return for promising centre half-forward Chris Groom, who they also hadn't see play.

Officially Todd Ridley was recruited as the uncontracted player, with Tony Delaney and Dale Kickett being traded for later picks.

[11] Whilst Kickett had a long and distinguished career at Fremantle, becoming the first player to play 100 games for the club and winning the Doig Medal in 1997, Delaney and Ridley weren't as successful.

Fremantle also recruited its inaugural captain, Ben Allan and three of their first four best and fairest award winners, Peter Mann, Stephen O'Reilly and Jason Norrish through the uncontracted player process.

After a disastrous 2001 season during which Fremantle sacked coach Damian Drum mid-year and only won 2 games, Fremantle then became only the second club to trade away the first selection in the national draft (after Sydney Swans in 1992), which it received in addition to selection 4 as a priority draft pick due to their poor performance.

Fremantle had not yet appointed a coach, so the recruitment was led by the chief executive officer (CEO) Cameron Schwab, who also had only recently been hired.

He then played mainly in defence for Hawthorn and was a key member of their 2008 AFL Grand Final winning team.

Pavlich didn't return to Adelaide and remained at Fremantle to become the club's longest serving captain, games and goal scoring record holder, 6-time All-Australian and 6-time Doig Medalist and in 2014 became the first Western Australian based player to play over 300 AFL games.