The Carlton Football Club’s 2011 AFL playing list has been finalised, with the drafting of Edward Curnow, Rhys O’Keeffe, Wayde Twomey, Mitchell Carter and Blake Bray as pre-season rookies.

Curnow, the Box Hill midfielder considered amongst the VFL’s best-performed players through the 2010 season, has been taken with Carlton’s first selection in the 2010 NAB AFL Rookie Draft.

Twenty-one year-old Curnow, formerly rookied to Adelaide as an 18 year-old, was a solid poller in this season’s JJ Liston Trophy count, finishing third despite incurring a season-ending break to his ankle in the Hawks’ 12th-round match against Sandringham at Trevor Barker Oval.

He went with the Blues’ first selection at 18 overall. O’Keeffe was then reclaimed with selection 35, with Swan Districts/Werribee’s Twomey (51) and South Fremantle’s Carter (66) rounding out the club’s four selections.

The club had earlier committed its 78th overall selection to Western Suburbs’ Blake Bray as a NSW Scholarship rookie.

Carlton Senior Coach Brett Ratten said the approach to this year’s rookie draft was governed by the need to get more midfielders into the playing group.

“Because we got the talls in the national draft, we needed to get more midfield run into our group,” Ratten said.

“(Edward) Curnow’s got a great engine, so has (Wayde) Twomey and so has (Mitchell) Carter, while Rhys (O’Keefe) can play wing, midfield and half-back.

“Curnow broke his ankle in round 12 and has been in rehab, but he’ll be right after Christmas. He’s hard at it and I saw him rack up 45 possessions against the Bullants.”

Ratten said that O’Keeffe, the 65th selection overall in the 2008 national draft, had battled injury setbacks for the best part of two seasons, and the club had changed its tack towards the player in initially delisting him with the understanding he would be redrafted as a rookie.

“We needed to get his body right, so we thought we’d go down that path of allowing him to get himself right and not have to play 22 games and be under enormous pressure,” Ratten said.

“He’s actually going extremely well. It looks like he’s over the worst of it, he’s back on track and it’s great to have him back on board . . . and we think that’s had a lot to do with the resources we now have here at Visy Park.”