It is folly to suggest that the fortunes of a down-and-out football club can turn entirely on one draft and one player, but the 2016 ‘package’ that is Hugh McCluggage is as close as you’ll get.

And as McCluggage prepares to play his 200^th AFL game for the Lions against the Western Bulldogs at the Gabba on Friday night, Lions recruiting boss Steve Conole has lifted the lid on one of the great draft coups in club history. And a gamble that is still paying dividends.

The Lions, who had finished 13^th-15^th-13^th-12^th from 2010-13, were still reeling from the loss of the ‘Go Home Five’ during the 2013 trade period when Jared Polec, pick #5 in 2010, and Billy Longer, Sam Docherty, Patrick Karnezis and Elliot Yeo, picks #8-12-25-30 in 2011, quit the club.

In 2014-15, in their first two years under coach Justin Leppitsch, they’d finished 15^th and 17^th with a combined 11-33 record, having beaten only two teams that went on to play finals.

And in what turned out to be the tipping point they’d finished 17^th in 2016 with a 3-19, ahead by 0.06% of an Essendon side that had been left threadbare by the supplements saga that saw 17 listed players miss the entire year.

They’d gone 3-19, beating only Essendon by 37 points at Marvel and posting two wins at the Gabba over 15^th-placed Gold Coast by 13 points and 14^th-placed Carlton by four points. And they’d posted a percentage of 61.6 – the lowest in club history.

Such was the state of disrepair they applied for and were granted a priority selection at the end of the first round in the 2016 draft – the first time a club had received priority assistance since a change in the rules in 2012.

As Conole recounts, this was the beginning of the turnaround.

The collective recruiting fraternity pretty much agreed there were three standouts in the 2016 draft pool – McCluggage from the North Ballarat Rebels, and Andrew McGrath and Tim Taranto from the Sandringham Dragons.

Brisbane, originally armed with pick #2 after Essendon at #1 and before GWS at #3, had identified McCluggage as the player they wanted.

Originally from Allansford, on the coast 256km south-west of Melbourne, McCluggage shares a 3 March birthday with 1991-95 Brisbane club champion Michael McLean and 1988 club champion Mark Withers, plus NBA star Kyrie Irving, track superstar Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Pakistani cricket captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, actress Jessica Biel, singer Ronan Keating, and Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. And he was born the same day as the NBA’s Jayson Tatum.

After graduating from Allansford, McCluggage had played juniors at South Warnambool, which delivered Jonathan Brown to the Lions, before finishing his schooling as a boarder at Clarendon College in Ballarat and playing with the Rebels in the then TAC Cup.

He’d had a “so-so” bottom age year, according to Conole, but won the Morrish Medal as the TAC Cup’s best player as a top-ager despite playing only 10 games, when he was only the second player in the competition’s history behind Patrick Dangerfield to average 25 possessions and two goals in their draft year.

So, says Conole, the quietly-spoken lad who had grown up on the family dairy farm was  ‘comfortably’ the Lions’ top choice in the 2016 draft pool.

On 16 November 2016 “The Weekly Times”, the local newspaper, ran a big story touting McCluggage as “the talk of the AFL world” and “a potential #1 selection”, with a photograph of him holding a football in front of the family cows at milking time.

“I’ve loved growing up here – I have pretty good memories of helping Dad out, whether it be on the tractor, or with the cows milking and stuff like that,” he told the paper.

But there were complications as D-Day neared. “GWS wanted to get to #1 but Essendon wouldn’t deal so they offered us #3 and #16 for pick #2,” said Conole, uncertain even now whether Giants wanted McGrath or Taranto.

“We debated it for ages. We knew it was a bit of a risk because you can never be 100% sure what’s going to happen but from what we could ascertain GWS had a few players similar to Hugh and weren’t going to take him, so we took a punt and went with it.”

So, when the football fraternity gathered for the draft at Sydney’s Hordern Pavillion on 25 November 2016 Essendon took McGrath at #1, GWS chose Taranto at #2 and Brisbane were delighted to pick up McCluggage at #3. And just as happy to claim up Jarrod Berry with pick #17, which had originally been #16 and was the other half of the GWS trade package.

It was virtually a free hit and certainly a huge bonus. “We thought ‘Bez’ (Berry) would go to West Coast at #13 and from what we understand they made a late decision to change and take Daniel Venables,” said Conole. “We couldn’t have been happier because they (Berry and McCluggage) were great mates and they were Vic Country boys so there wasn’t the same go-home factor.”

As it turned out, Venables played in the 2018 West Coast premiership in his 15^th game but played only six more games before he was forced into retirement due to ongoing symptoms from a severe concussion.

Brisbane closed out the draft with Alex Witherden at #23, Cedric Cox at #24, Jacob Allison at #55, Corey Lyons at #71, Jake Barrett, Mitch Hinge and Oscar McInerney at #2-20-37 in the rookie draft, and added Category B rookies Blake Grewar and Matt Eagles, who had won ‘The Recruit’, a reality TV show.

Fast forward eight and a half years and McCluggage will be the first player from the AFL Class of 2016 to reach 200 games. He heads Geelong pick #40 Tom Stewart (183), Sydney pick #11 Ollie Florent (180) and pick #21 Will Hayward (179), Berry (176), McGrath (173), Fremantle pick #60 Luke Ryan (172), Taranto (169 – now at Richmond), North #12 Jy Simpkin (169), McInerney (160), Port #18 Sam Powell-Pepper (158), Geelong rookie #16 Jack Henry (155), Richmond #29 Shai Bolton (151 – now at Fremantle), and Gold Coast #4 Ben Ainsworth, who will play his 150th game this week.

Of a Round 1 crop that stretched to 20 players, only 10 are still playing at their original club, and three are out of the AFL system.

Game tallies for other Round 1 picks were GWS #5 Will Setterfield (79 games at GWS, Carlton and now Essendon), Carlton #6 Sam Petrevski-Seton (121 games at Carlton and West Coast – retired), Fremantle #8 Griffin Logue (87 games at Fremantle and now North), Gold Coast #9 Will Brodie (54 games at Gold Coast and now Fremantle), Gold Coast #10 Jack Bowes (134 games at Gold Coast and now Geelong), GWS #14 Harry Perryman (146 games at GWS and now Collingwood), Adelaide #15 Jordan Gallucci (27 games at Adelaide – delisted), Port Adelaide #16 Todd Marshall (111 games), Bulldogs #19 Tim English (148), GWS #20 Isaac Cumming (98 games at GWS and now Adelaide).

But the story of McCluggage and Berry goes far beyond what the prized 2016 draftees have done on the field.

As soon as the long-time mates arrived in Brisbane they were taken in by Queenslander Harris Andrews, who had not long moved out of home. He’d only played 36 games and hadn’t even turned 20, but already he shown signs of the wonderful leader he has become.

And just as Andrews did then to help build a culture for which Brisbane is now admired across the competition, McCluggage and Berry have done likewise with new recruits in recent years.

According to those who know McCluggage best, he’s the same quiet, unassuming charter heading into his 200^th game, and it wouldn’t surprise if post-football he’ll happily go back to the anonymity of life on the farm.

THE McCLUGGAGE FILE

He’s the 8th Brisbane player to wear #6 after Dale Dickson (30 games), Daryl Cox (1), Brad Rowe (14), Brendon Retzlaff (15), Adrian Fletcher (107), Luke Power (282) and Josh Green (76), and has already has topped the games record in #6 for Fitzroy, held at 164 games, ironically, by Team of the Century choice and 1944 premiership player Fred Hughson.

He is the only ‘McCluggage” among 13,254 AFL players all-time, and, while not quite with the same profile as actor Hugh Grant and entertainer Hugh Jackman, he will be the second ‘Hugh’ to top 200 AFL games after Essendon 229-gamer and 1962-65 premiership player turned radio/TV commentator Hugh Mitchell, who died in October last year aged 89.

He will be the 22^nd among 356 Brisbane players all-time to play 200 games, and the 692^nd in AFL history.

He’ll be the third-youngest Brisbane 200-gamer at 27 years 137 days, older only than Nigel Lappin (26/317) and Jason Akermanis (27/109) on a list which has only six players under 28. The others are Andrews (27/194), Marcus Ashcroft (27/197) and Michael Voss (27/272).

With 4434 career possessions from 199 games, he’ll sit behind only Brownlow Medallist Simon Black, who had 4575 at 200, and ahead of Voss (3243), Dayne Zorko (4242), Luke Power (3969), Daniel Rich (3951), Lappin (3948), Ashcroft (3870), Akermanis (3561) and Jed Adcock (3535) in a group of 10 at 3500-plus.

Having played 16 finals, he’ll trail only Justin Leppitsch (20), Akermanis (19), Black (18), Brown and Power (17) at the same mark, and with 47 Brownlow Medal votes to the end of last year, and likely to add significantly this year, he sits behind only Voss and Black (111), Brown (103), Zorko (74), Lappin (62) and Power (56) on the club’s 200-game vote list.

He’ll be the most durable 200-gamer in club history, having missed only five games since his debut alongside Berry in coach Chris Fagan’s third game at the helm, when he had 13 possessions in a 31-point loss to St.Kilda at Marvel Stadium in Round 3 2017. Later that season he was “rested” in Round 8 and “managed” in Round 19 – something of a curiosity even for the ‘clubspeak’ of modern football – missed one game with a hamstring in 2019 and 2022, and one with concussion in 2023.  Zorko is #2 on the durability list among Brisbane 200-gamers, having missed seven games, ahead of Ashcroft, Lappin and Andrews (18), Black (25), Akermanis (27) and Darryl White (30).

WHAT HE’S HAD TO SAY

Fronting the media this week ahead of his 200^th game, McCluggage told how he had “never” considered leaving Brisbane and was typically modest, gracious and team-first as the Lions begin a tough six-game run to the finals. Exactly what you’d expect.

Still, ‘Fages’ won’t be entirely disappointed if on Friday night he can pull out a big one to celebrate his 200^th in style.