The Archivist of What-Might-Be

The AFL draft’s parallel universe, and the curious amateur who helps hold it together.

If you follow the AFL draft, you know about FootyStuff. The channel’s clips are used on Gettable, on draft night, and even (not always with proper attribution) on the weeknight sports bulletins. Before you first hear a prospect’s name on SEN or see them in Cal Twomey’s phantom, there’s a fair chance you’ve already watched their tape on FootyStuff. What the videos lack in resolution (a constraint of the original broadcast), they more than make up for in influence. It’s slightly ironic, then, that the creator of what’s become the go-to source for video of draft prospects – and the closest thing footy has to an open-source scouting bureau – actually lives in New Zealand.

David Scrutton works alone, and he works a lot; there is a near-infinite supply of needy fans asking for clips of their pet prospects. But he’s also part of a growing community of professionals and amiable amateurs feeding the burgeoning appetite for draft content. We spoke about his channel, the growth of the draft industry, what he looks for in a player, and his impressions of this year’s crop.

Scrutton didn’t start FootyStuff with visions of an empire. He made his first video for the most prosaic (but, for a certain kind of straight man, utterly compelling) reason: persuading a mate from his Fantasy NBA League that Harley Reid was the real deal. His channel is called FootyStuff because it was only ever meant to be a placeholder. Now it’s too late to turn back. But the chain of events that ultimately led to that first Harley video didn’t begin with harmless sport-nerd persuasion. It began with the Essendon supplements saga. “I’m a guy that enjoys the fantasy of the game, and imagining where my favourite team and the great players are going to go in the future,” Scrutton tells me. “And it just felt like the drug saga turned all of those conversations around the Essendon Football Club nihilistic, and drained a lot of the enjoyment out of it.”

His disillusionment was so profound that even the thought of moving to New Zealand – and losing ubiquitous access to footy – didn’t faze him. He redirected his energy into study, but when Covid hit and his new home was plunged into lockdown, he found himself with an abundance of time. He taught himself the fundamentals of video editing and started a podcast with mates back in Australia, nominally about fantasy sports, but really to stay in touch in uncertain times.

Those experiences taught Scrutton something important. He might have temporarily fallen out of love with footy, and perhaps even with Essendon, but he never lost his curiosity about the draft. Partly that’s temperament; he’s an analytical guy. But it’s also because the draft occupies a completely different emotional register to the week-to-week grind of supporting a club. You can fall out of love with footy and the circus that follows it. Mainstream coverage can disappoint, the league can meddle with rules, your club can break your heart one too many times. I had my own modest version of this after Izak Rankine’s homophobic slur against a Collingwood player last season; no matter how I tried to talk myself out of it, the incident draped the Crows’ season in a tragic air.

But although you can fall out of love with footy for hours or years, you can’t fall out of love with the draft. It never punishes you in the same way. It never forces you to confront how ordinary your team actually is. Even a poor haul isn’t a defeat so much as it is a prelude to next year’s jackpot. Many complementary forces have driven the AFL draft’s popularity – the US sports-industrial complex, Cal Twomey’s patient advocacy, and creators like Scrutton giving people new ways to engage – but there’s an emotional dimension, too. The draft is an escape hatch from the bleak quotidian; a parallel universe where things are either good or about to be good. Even as Scrutton’s relationship with the on-field product wavered, the world of what-might-be remained alive.

Scrutton shared those early videos of Harley Reid (still the most popular on his channel) and the other leading 2023 prospects on BigFooty. And, in his words, “people wanted more and more.” It’s tempting to imagine it unfolding with the manic rhythm of a Breaking Bad cook montage — one clip uploaded, then another, then suddenly dozens of people politely (or not) asking for their next hit. The appreciation from people who suddenly had a new way of expressing their interest in the draft helped Scrutton rediscover a more positive association with the game. I put it to him that he’d identified and seized a gap in the market. He sees it slightly differently:

“This was the content that I wanted. I see my core audience as people that are really engaged and switched on in the draft space. But they don’t have the time to spend hundreds of hours on a weekend across the footy season watching junior footy, attending junior footy games in person. They probably already know a reasonable amount about the pool… but they get to go a little bit deeper with the videos on my channel.”

FootyStuff’s value proposition is disarmingly simple: they’re not just highlights videos. Instead, they capture all – or at least as much as the broadcast will allow – of a prospect’s on-ball actions, usually in a package short enough to watch while waiting for your kettle to boil or your code to compile.

In a historian’s parlance, they’re a primary source. You see the raking passes and big grabs, but also the rushed kicks, fumbles, and turns into trouble. That lets viewers form their own impressions free of the editorialising that even the best highlight packages or write-ups inevitably involve. Ironically, the lack of editorialising (Scrutton has added limited voiceover to some videos this year) makes each FootyStuff video a miniature story. Seeing Willem Duursma recover from early mistakes to be best on ground in a Coates Talent League game isn’t just interesting because it demonstrates resilience – it’s a tiny redemption arc.

Creating content you would personally like to consume is an excellent rule of thumb for anyone contemplating that channel, blog, or podcast they’ve been thinking about. But it still feels notable that nothing like FootyStuff existed before Scrutton created it. These days every major sport has a parallel universe built by fans – databases, cut-ups, podcasts, mock drafts. The NBA has Sam Vecenie (who, curiously enough, now calls Melbourne home). Soccer has armies of teens pumping out low-res videos of wunderkinds set to the worst EDM imaginable. The AFL draft has exploded in popularity – Scrutton credits the likes of Twomey, Michael Alvaro (and the RookieMe Central team), and Jasper Chellappah, and the charisma of recent high picks like Harley, Nick Daicos, and Jason Horne-Francis. But before he started his channel, there simply wasn’t a reliable archive of publicly available footage of upcoming prospects. Draft tragics discussed players from drastically different vantage points: some had followed a kid for years, others had been at the game, others were going off write-ups or vibes.

FootyStuff gives everyone a common starting point. It’s no wonder Scrutton calls himself a content wholesaler. It’s a perfect description of the niche he occupies in the draft landscape. And he loves the work.

“Working in IT, there was a disconnect between what you’re doing and the products your business is creating. What I love about this is that I can create something and get immediate appreciation and feedback.”

That said, perhaps it isn’t surprising a resource like FootyStuff didn’t exist until a curious, entrepreneurial person with time to spare created it. The AFL is a billion-dollar industry, but a billion isn’t much when compared to global sports with more sophisticated media and analysis infrastructures. It’s partly a demand problem: there simply aren’t that many footy fans by global standards, and there isn’t the same established path where a passion project can be parlayed into a job in the industry. (It happens here, but not nearly as often as in soccer or US sports.)

It’s also a supply problem. Scrutton is unfailingly polite about the folks who broadcast junior footy. It’s hard yakka, and they’re probably not sufficiently resourced. The camera not following the ball, the commentator mangling a name, the AFL uploading a stream minutes after a Champs game has started – all annoying, but all things Scrutton has learned to work around. The problem isn’t the people; it’s the level of interest from AFL House.

“I don’t want to get too controversial,” he says, immediately piquing my interest. “But it feels to me as though, when it comes to the AFL, anything that’s not the core product – the games, the game-day experience, etc – they kind of pay lip service to it.” It’s not hard to read between the lines: the AFL doesn’t make money from the Champs or the Talent League (and ditto the SANFL/WAFL underage competitions), so they don’t invest in the broadcasts. Scrutton draws an interesting analogy:

“Originally the AFL was managing the talent pathways in the northern states, and apparently it was just getting completely neglected. We’ve seen this huge boom in junior footy participation up north largely because the AFL handed those pathways over to the clubs, who had an incentive to get it right. That was a revolution for the game. And so it feels to me that this is another example: when it’s not the core product, the AFL just lacks the interest. The incentive structure isn’t there.”

Although it’s easy to lament this – who knows how talent evaluation might improve with better broadcasts and deeper stats? – it’s also hard to fully criticise the AFL. As avidly as some people follow the draft, there’s almost zero commercial interest in the underage competitions. Go to a SANFL U18 or Coates Talent League game and most of the crowd are scouts or the family of players. College sports, this ain’t.

Scrutton hasn’t had direct contact with anyone from the AFL or a club; and that suits him just fine. “From what I can gather,” he says, “the AFL is content for me to just continue doing my thing, because it’s mutually beneficial. They don’t have to pay anyone to do something similar, and it helps drive interest in the product.”

The satisfaction of creating something useful is a bigger motivator than official recognition. Still, recognition has come from unexpected quarters. The family of a highly-rated 2025 prospect reached out to thank him for the footage he’d compiled of their son. (I assured him he needn’t feel awkward about the fact that said prospect has since plummeted down the rankings.) Recruiters use his clips. Player managers of undrafted kids use FootyStuff videos as part of their pitch when lobbying clubs to give their clients a spot on their rookie list.

Scrutton has published 405 videos about 70ish different players this season (more than 20 on Willem Duursma alone), compared to 363 last year. It’s not difficult work per se, but it is time-consuming, and striking the right balance between the most-discussed prospects and paid bespoke requests can be tricky.

Although quick to clarify he’s not a scout, Scrutton admits it’s impossible to watch as much draft tape as he does and not develop opinions about player attributes, this year’s class, and things the average punter gets wrong:

“One of the things that frustrates me is when people use throwaway lines like, ‘he’s only successful because he’s more physically developed,’ or ‘he’s a man playing against boys and it won’t stand up at AFL level.’ I’ve heard this about prospects for as long as I’ve followed the draft.”

At this point I volunteered my own small bugbear: people who express scepticism about Willem Duursma – this year’s now near-certain Pick 1 – because of the shortcomings of his older brothers. From there it was a short step to discussing his older brother Zane – who, two years after being taken by North Melbourne with Pick 4 in the 2023 draft, is more a case study of the vagaries of drafting and development than a meaningful AFL presence. “I do think he [Duursma] was drafted a little too highly,” Scrutton says, “but I had him in the top 10 that year, and I said at the time he’d take a couple of years. When he had a chance to play against men at Casey, he showed the talent. He leapt on some heads and kicked a couple of goals. But he was also pushed out of contests very easily. Sometimes kids step up to VFL and take to it like a duck to water. I didn’t see that with Zane. But the talent is there.”

It’s too early to write Duursma off. Player growth curves are non-linear. But he has become a kind of Rorschach test for fan psychology and talent identification. Is it that all the skill in the world is useless if you can’t win the ball? Did North pick him without a clear development plan? Is he just the slowest of slow burns? There are dozens of plausible explanations.

For now, he’s the avatar of a frustrating reality for people who follow the draft, either as amateurs or professionals: it’s still extremely difficult to forecast how even the most talented juniors will cope with the rigours of AFL football. Drafting is more scientific than it used to be; clubs know more about physical and psychological traits than ever. But they are still epistemologically constrained in fundamental ways.

Take the pre-draft interview. It’s widely regarded as a useful glimpse into a player’s psychological profile. But players can be coached to say the right things. Nerves can derail a perfectly capable kid. It’s a data point, but rarely a decisive one. Clubs only ever get to roll the dice once on each pick.

If Zane continues on his current trajectory, he will be remembered as a poor use of Pick 4 in what’s shaping up as a strong draft. But even if that happens, I’m not convinced blame can be cleanly pinned on player or club. A club’s environment, its list profile, a player’s personal circumstances, and myriad other factors all feed into the outcome in ways that are hard to untangle. I advance an even more audacious claim to Scrutton: even if a player ends up a “bust”, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were a bad player, or that the club made the wrong decision. Processes aren’t the same thing as outcomes. He agrees, and – as proof he’s returned to the Essendon flock – turns the conversation to Elijah Tsatas, Pick 5 in the 2022 draft.

“There are, quite rightly, questions around the competency of Essendon’s development programs. Would Elijah have been on a different trajectory at a different club? It’s reasonable to ask, but impossible to answer. Essendon supporters talk endlessly about Adrian Dodoro’s record and his failure to draft stars with top-10 picks. But it’s a space with so many moving parts. You can make mistakes very easily. You can’t judge a recruiter on one pick, or even one or two drafts. You judge them over time. Can they assemble competitive lists? Can they build a team capable of contending for premierships?”

I push a little further again: not only is one dud draft no proof of a dud recruitment team, I’m not convinced several consecutive dud drafts are iron-clad proof either. Fans rarely think in distributions. They tend to believe the ladder is a clean moral ranking. But chance exists. Poor clubs make bad decisions and endure dreadful luck.

Scrutton is sceptical of claims that the upcoming draft is the worst in living memory. In fact, he regards it as an unusually interesting one because of how flaws are distributed among the leading prospects. “You have a clear standout in Willem Duursma,” he says. “You have potentially a clear number two in Cooper Duff-Tytler. Then from Picks 2-10, it’s full of different types. You can pick based on traits you prioritise, or the positions your list is deficient in.” He cites Josh Lindsay and Dyson Sharp as representing two radically different archetypes. “I’m torn. I like the high-skill guys, like Lindsay. He’s one of the best kicks I’ve seen come through the juniors in years. But I also appreciate the low-risk guys, the Sharp types: the ones you can almost guarantee will give you 10-15 good years.”

Risk is the operative word. Different clubs, at different stages of their list builds, exhibit different levels of tolerance. Some clubs can afford to gamble because they believe their list is strong. Others avoid gambles for precisely the same reason. Clubs at the bottom often struggle to choose between the player who projects as an 80 per cent chance of being a good AFL footballer and the one whose unique attributes make him both more likely to fail and more likely to become a star.

Willem Duursma looks more like the latter. He’s separated himself from the pack in the back half of the season to the extent it would now be a major shock if he’s not selected first on Wednesday night. Scrutton sees flaws – but also shades of the best player in the game.

“At the start of the year, I was concerned about Duursma’s ability to execute under pressure. He’d panic-kick a bit. In space he can hit those searing darts, but in tight he struggled. If he couldn’t become an inside midfielder, that capped his upside. But the sell for him at Pick 1 is that he could become a Marcus Bontempelli type – impacting on the ball, then transitioning forward and doing those Bontempelli things.”

It’s unlikely Duursma becomes as good as Bontempelli. But, to flog the uncertainty horse one last time, it was extremely unlikely that Bontempelli would ever become Bontempelli. A skim of the scouting reports from his draft year are hopeful, but tinged with doubt. He was described as lacking speed (!), prone to going missing, without a clear “backup plan”, raw, still growing into his frame. It’s cold comfort to the clubs who picked before the Western Bulldogs did, but they weren’t being irrational; they were operating under uncertainty.

Aside from Duursma and Josh Lindsay, Scrutton is fond of Sullivan Robey (surely one of the biggest bolters in draft memory) and intrigued by his evolution across the season.

“When he started at Talent League level he was a lead-mark forward with incredibly clean hands. Full-pace, arms outstretched, absolutely clean – very Matty Lloyd. Then through the finals he showed he could transition into an inside mid. But he didn’t start playing top-level juniors until Round 13. We just haven’t seen enough to be confident he’s that guy.”

Oskar Taylor, Archie Ludowyke, and Louis Emmett are mentioned as other players Scrutton thinks are underrated relative to consensus.

It was almost time to wrap up; there’s always more footage for Scrutton to clip. I figured it made sense to end at the beginning and ask who he thought Essendon, the club that broke his heart and, indirectly, led him to start FootyStuff, should draft with Picks 5 and 6. “I’ve been big on Dyson Sharp,” he says. “One thing we’ve desperately lacked is leadership. By all reports he was the driving force behind SA’s brilliant Champs team this year – lifting teammates, celebrating with them. They love him. That’s what Essendon needs.”

Ah, leadership. I never know what to make of it. It’s always described with reverence, but rarely with precision. Is it an adjunct to skill, or one of its essential ingredients? “Great kick” is easy to understand. Leadership, not as much. But, in the aftermath of Zach Merrett’s desperate attempt to defect, it makes sense that it’s a trait an Essendon supporter would covet.

Sharp is also an interesting name because Essendon aren’t short on inside midfielders. It’s a position they’ve invested in heavily. But beyond Sam Durham and Jye Caldwell, question marks hang over all of them. To underscore the point, Scrutton names another SA-based midfielder as his second preference:

“I think we’ll look strongly at Sam Cumming. No disrespect to Archie Perkins, but he hasn’t come on as that dynamic, powerful high half-forward who can chop out in the middle. And he’s almost 24. The clock is ticking. Cumming played local seniors at 15. He’s got a mature head and body – and he’s powerful.”

With that final nugget of wisdom about Sam Cumming, it was time to get going. What struck me most about Scrutton wasn’t his encyclopaedic grasp of this year’s pool, or even the clarity with which he articulates the limits of the draft as a predictive science. It was the sincerity of his attachment to a corner of the game that thrives precisely because it’s incomplete and unknown. The draft is where imagination outruns disappointment, where flaws are puzzles rather than verdicts, and where a one-man operation on the South Island of New Zealand can shape how thousands of fans imagine their club’s future.

FootyStuff began as a way of staying connected to a sport at a time when that sport – and, indirectly, a virus lab in Wuhan – had let David Scrutton down. Now it’s part of the scaffolding supporting the AFL’s parallel universe: the one built on possibility, hope, and the unshakeable belief that the next clip, the next kid, the next year, might be the one.