{"id":297122,"date":"2025-11-20T13:34:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T13:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/297122\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T13:34:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T13:34:15","slug":"afl-draft-why-west-coast-missed-out-on-nga-and-father-son-prospects-afl-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/297122\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL Draft: Why West Coast missed out on NGA and father-son prospects – AFL News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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West Coast has explained the reason why they couldn’t secure father-son prospect Charlie Banfield<\/a> and NGA talent Koby Evans<\/a> is that they ran out of primary list spots.<\/p>\n

The Eagles entered the 2025 draft with four club-tied players, with Banfield and Evans joined by Tylah Williams<\/a> and Wes Walley.<\/p>\n

Brisbane placed a bid on Evans at Pick 38; St Kilda followed shortly after with Pick 41 for Banfield.<\/p>\n

A busy first night, saw Willem Duursma<\/a> (Pick 1), Cooper Duff-Tytler<\/a> (Pick 4) and Josh Lindsay<\/a> (Pick 19) drafted by the Western Australian club, while Sam Allen<\/a> (Pick 29) and Williams (Pick 39) followed suit, forcing a squeeze on availabilities.<\/p>\n

“Well, at that point, we actually didn’t have a list spot left,” West Coast list manager Matt Clarke said shortly after the completion of the 2025 AFL Draft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“So we obviously prioritised with our rankings with those players, with Sam (Allen) and both Tylah (Williams), so we obviously nominated our Father Son and our NGA boys, hoping that we could actually add them at some point.<\/p>\n

“But there’s a lot of young boys out there tonight, and tomorrow that are going to be pretty disappointed they are not on an AFL<\/a> list, and we’re really excited that those two boys (Banfield and Evans) got an opportunity to do that. So we wish them the best.”<\/p>\n

The Eagles were hopeful that the club-tied pair slipped through to the rookie intake in the hope they could join the club, but Clarke admitted West Coast, and Banfield and Evans, were “prepared”.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know if you get disappointed. You need to be prepared,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We had a bit of intel around who might actually bid on these guys, so we’d had to make some strategic decisions about who we’re going to match and who we weren’t going to match.<\/p>\n

“But it was just goes on our rankings at the end of the day. So we don’t want to compromise that; we thought both those boys should have an opportunity to be on an AFL<\/a> list. But we obviously had a certain amount of list spots that we wanted to prioritise too. Unfortunately, it just didn’t fall their way.”<\/p>\n

The Eagles hold two rookie list spots; one via Category A and the other through Category B.<\/p>\n

Clarke was optimistic about Walley joining the club as a Category B rookie on Friday after he slipped through the selections in the national intake.<\/p>\n

West Coast are also open to welcoming train-on players throughout the summer months, potentially looking at utilising the SSP.<\/p>\n

Local product Milan Murdock could also be a player of interest to the 2025 wooden spooners after the 24-year-old continues to carve out a stellar state league resume.<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Playing for East Fremantle in the WAFL, Murdock has been named in the representative team the past three seasons, as well as claimed the Simpson Medal in 2024 and 2025 state games, as well as the 2023 grand final best on ground.<\/p>\n

Amongst his accolades, he’s won three club best and fairests for the Sharks.<\/p>\n

“I think everybody’s probably looked at Milan Murdock,” Clarke said.<\/p>\n

“I think from a lot of clubs for a while, and he’s played a bit of state league footy. We’ll have a chat about a lot of those guys at that age profile as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast has explained the reason why they couldn’t secure father-son prospect Charlie Banfield and NGA talent Koby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-297122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}