Recruiting
Due to the requirement for ruckmen to be very tall, in recent years clubs have often gone outside of the traditional junior football leagues to recruit ruckmen. Cameron Jackson was recruited by Fremantle in the 1998 Rookie Draft after previously playing in the National Basketball League, but never played an AFL game. The selection of Dean Brogan by Port Adelaide with the 26th selection in the 1999 AFL Draft was much more successful, with Brogan playing for Port for 12 seasons and playing 174 games, including the being a member of the winning 2004 AFL Grand Final team. He had previously won an NBL championship with the Adelaide 36ers. Other basketballers such as David Fanning (Cairns Taipans and Collingwood), Daniel Bass (Metropolitan State University of Denver and Port Adelaide), Seamus McNamara (Marist College, TSV Dachau Spurs and Collingwood), Alex Starling (Bethune-Cookman University and Sydney) and Ben Dowell (Santa Clara University and Adelaide) have all been recruited, but have not been as successful as Brogan in converting to Australian football at the AFL level. Another non-traditional recruit, Mike Pyke (Canada rugby union, US Montauban and Sydney), has enjoyed somewhat more AFL success than most of the aforementioned basketballers.
Read more about this topic: Ruckman (Australian Rules Football)