The Bombers will enter Thursday night's National Draft ""very confident"" of picking up four quality players national recruitment manager Adrian Dodoro said today.
Dodoro believes the 2009 draft is stronger in midfielders but, despite popular opinion that the club will focus on recruiting smalls, says he will take the best available player with the club's first selection (No.10).
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""There are going to be some midfielders there but there might also be a quality tall too,"" he exclusively told Bomber.tv today.
""There is talk of Butcher slipping down the order so you have to consider him. There's Melksham, Moore and there's other boys such as Sheppard, Lucas, Jetta, there are a whole host of players around that mark.
""Pick No.10 represents a pretty good pick for us and it's going to be a pretty hard choice for us because there are four or five players that are in contention for that selection.
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""The first five or six (overall draft selections) pick themselves as it does every year but I think the next 20-odd players are very, very talented and there are a lot of players that have the capability to play 100, 150 or 200 games of footy.""
Dodoro says 2009 is not a strong draft but Essendon has traded itself into a good position.
""There are no 17-year-olds,"" he said.
""The Gold Coast came in this year and cleaned up on the 17-year-olds but we are in a fortunate position in that we have got our selections fairly early.
""We've got 10, 24, 26 and 33 so that has put us in a pretty strong position; we think there is good depth up to that mark so we are happy.""
Dodoro refused to speculate on whether the club might recruit Luke Ball.
Essendonfc.com.au will report on the National Draft from 6:30pm on Thursday, 26th November or you can keep track of who the Bombers select via Twitter or Facebook.
