He teased the football world for three years, but after a big 2018, Collingwood’s Jordan De Goey is a retrospective No.1 draft pick. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Four years on, and in the first of Footyology’s “Redraft” series in the lead-up to the 2018 national draft, only four members of the 2014 AFL draft top 10 have kept their spots in the revised order – Jordan De Goey, Angus Brayshaw, Christian Petracca and Darcy Moore.

Paddy McCartin, Jarrod Pickett, Caleb Marchbank, Paul Ahern, Peter Wright and Nakia Cockatoo have all made way for Isaac Heeney, Jake Lever, Kane Lambert, Harris Andrews, Mason Cox and Adam Saad.

After a breakout season which saw him kick a team-high 48 goals and make the 40-man All-Australian squad, De Goey has been promoted from pick No.5 to the top of the tree, replacing McCartin.

De Goey teased the footy world in his first three years, but exploded in 2018, after overcoming some highly-publicised off-field indiscretions, to become one of the game’s most dynamic small forwards – his demolition job on five-time All-Australian Alex Rance in the preliminary final a highlight.

Heeney jumped 16 spots from No.18 to No.2 and it’s easy to understand why given the body of work he has already put together in his four years with the Swans.

In fairness, the pick he was taken with was inflated because he was a Swans academy player and probably would have been a top-five player originally if not for that.

Regarded as one of the best young players in the competition, Heeney has made his name mainly as a strong-marking forward who can also be a midfield weapon. But this year he added another string to his bow by proving to be just as adept in defence. The Sydney faithful can look forward to another decade of watching this emerging star’s career blossom.

Like De Goey, Brayshaw’s career looked to be at the crossroads at the start of the year. Not because of his ill-discipline, though, but because of repeated concussions.

Luckily for the footy world, he overcame those issues in fine style to put together the best season of his fledgling career and build a reputation as one of the game’s best inside midfielders. He keeps his place as the third best player of the draft.

Lever comes in at No.4, after originally being taken at No.14 by Adelaide. The now Demon has quickly established himself as one of the best defenders in the game and if not for a serious knee injury midway through the year, he may have even cracked the top three.

At No.5 is Richmond premiership hero Kane Lambert, who is the first of the rookie selections.

As a side note, it’s fantastic to see three players taken in the rookie draft already in the top 10 just four years later. It just goes to show that there are plenty of gems either still left over late in the national draft or that get overlooked altogether.

Lambert admitted that his career was at the crossroads at the end of 2016, but he responded to that threat superbly by finishing third in the club’s best-and-fairest in a premiership year and cementing his spot in the best team of the last two years.

The 26-year-old has essentially shot up 137 picks in the rankings given he was taken at pick No.46 in the rookie draft.

Andrews, an academy pick steal at 61, comes in at No.6 as one of the game’s most promising young defenders, the talented Petracca slides from two to seven and the big American Mason Cox achieved the biggest upgrade of the lot – moving 148 picks from No.60 in the rookie draft to No.8.

It seemed an unlikely scenario after his first game of 2018 when he really struggled to have an impact against Hawthorn, but as the season went on, Cox became more and more comfortable in his skin – so much so that he was one of Collingwood’s best finals players and almost helped them clinch the flag.

There’s no doubt that his game in the preliminary final – one of the great individual September performances – and his second half in the grand final helped thrust him up the pecking order dramatically.

Cox’s teammate Moore keeps his spot at No.9 and while some may point to his injury history as a reason for him to drop out, he is still a serious talent and if gets his body right he has the potential to become one of best swingmen in the game.

Saad, who is now at Essendon and is one of the game’s most effective attacking defenders, rounds out the top 10 after originally being taken at pick No.25 in the rookie draft by the Suns.

Of course, there are always hard luck stories and the likes of Brayden Maynard, Touk Miller, Jason Castagna, Dan Butler, Caleb Daniel, Liam Duggan, Bailey Dale, Mitch McGovern, Toby McLean and Alex Neal-Bullen can consider themselves a little hard done by to miss out on the revised top 10.

But the book is far from written on 2014, and like Cockatoo and Wright, who slid out of the original top 10, they are every chance of ending up in the revised top 10 at the end of their careers.