Former St Kilda coach Tim Watson has outlined how club legend Lenny Hayes nearly ended up at the Swans.
Watson, while discussing some of the fundamental issues with recruiting, explained the club had a number of players ranked higher than Hayes in the 1998 draft.
“If you go back and look at the draft in 1998, we chose Lenny Hayes with our first pick,” Watson told SEN Breakfast.
“I remember on the board, Nic Fosdike, his name was up there, Jude Bolton, his name was there, Mark McVeigh. We probably would’ve taken any of those players at that time too.
“Lenny Hayes still happened to be there at pick 11, which was our first pick. That has proven to be a magnificent choice by John Beveridge at the time.
“I can tell you right now, we would’ve taken a number of players ahead of Lenny Hayes. The slows on Lenny Hayes, this is the thing about recruiting, was that he was a slow-legged player.
“Yeah he was a ball winner, he had a great nose for the game, he was an outstanding young man, you were never going to have a problem with him in terms of his personality, he was committed, he was all of those things.
“But I can guarantee you that had Jude Bolton not been taken by the Sydney Swans (at pick eight), we would’ve taken Bolton ahead of Hayes because Bolton at the time, Melbourne boy, Lenny Hayes, New South Wales boy, it was just a practical thing.
“You know, Hayes might want to go home at some stage, so if Jude Bolton is there, we’ll take Bolton.”
Watson added that at the end of Hayes’ first season, Sydney proposed St Kilda a trade that would’ve seen the 297-gamer swapped for Bolton.
“At the end of their first year, because we were so desperate to build the midfield at St Kilda, we gave Hayes a lot of games in his first year, we were keen to build players and develop players,” Watson said.
“At the end of the first year (Sydney) sniffed us out to see whether we would in fact entertain the idea of swapping the two players.
“I don’t know whether they spoke to Jude, we never spoke to Lenny about it because we didn’t entertain the idea.
“We realised at that stage that we had a super young talent that was potentially going to be a great player for the club for 10 years.”
Bolton ended up having a fantastic career at the Swans as well, playing in two premierships among his 325 games.