With the Half-Time edition of Docker Mag hitting households this week, check out the cover feature from this year's Bounce Down edition.
One grew up in Queensland, where football is more synonymous with scrums and tries. One struggled to get a game in his school side in Shepparton, while the other has Zimbabwean heritage and was playing amateurs in Western Australia for Trinity Aquinas not so long ago.
Another was told he was too small to play AFL and almost became a jockey. While they’re all very different from each other, Lee Spurr, Michael Barlow, Tendai Mzungu and Hayden Ballantyne have something in common.
They all are what the football media like to call ‘Brad Lloyd specials’: 20-something-year-old draftees who had almost immediate impacts in the AFL after being selected by the Fremantle Dockers’ head of recruiting and his team.
All were overlooked, numerous times, as clubs preferred to draft 18-year-olds who could be chiselled from scratch into AFL footballers.
Their stories highlight a weakness that existed in drafting methods that Lloyd and his team of recruiters turned into an advantage for Fremantle.
While ‘kids’ were being drafted just days after their last high-school exam, players such as those mentioned above had already experienced much of what life had to offer.
They had to grind it out in lower levels of the game, they moved out of home, and they worked full-time jobs, as each passing year the AFL clubs deemed them unworthy of a spot on a list.
“Mature-age draftees often have an outstanding character as they have shown resilience to bounce back and commit themselves after being overlooked in previous drafts,” Brad Lloyd says of the qualities his team seeks when assessing a potential draftee.
When asked if they thought they’d have been better footballers had they been drafted when they were 18, Barlow, Mzungu and Spurr had similar responses.
Twenty-two when he made his AFL debut with a best-on-ground effort in 2010, Barlow would like to think he’d have been able to perform well straight away regardless of his age, but that’s the competitor in him speaking.
The realist has his doubts.
“At 18, I may not have been physically ready and mature enough to play AFL,” he says.
“I developed a lot after that. I was always confident I could have had an impact, but whether it would have been straight out as an18-year-old, that’s crystal ball stuff.”
Spurr has won two premierships playing for Central Districts in the SANFL. He was 24 when he played his first game for Fremantle in 2012.
He says all the years playing against men held him in good stead at AFL level, but so, too, have the life experiences he’s had. Experiences he believes he may have missed out on had he been drafted earlier.
“You’ve been in the real world, you’ve seen what it’s like,” he says. “I went to university and played SANFL and I got a gist of what it’s like out there having to work.
“You realise how privileged you are just to be in the system. Once I got in and I saw how great it was, I wanted to work hard to stay in the system.”
Mzungu, also 24 when he pulled on the boots for the first time as an AFL player in 2011, doesn’t think he’d still be in the system today had he been drafted when he was a teenager.
He goes as far as to say he was “lucky” not to have been drafted earlier.
“Just purely on football ability, I don’t think I was ready to play AFL football at that stage,” he says.
“I wasn’t developed fully and my footy and running wasn’t where it is now.
“I was playing amateur footy in the colts, and although I did quite well at that level, it’s a massive step up to AFL level.”
In character with his cheeky, on-field confidence, Ballantyne has a different take to his fellow 20-something debutants.
He believes he would be the same player today, regardless of when he made his debut, which came as a 21-year-old in 2009.
In fairness to Ballantyne, he had been playing at a very high level from the moment he entered the WAFL, winning the Sandover Medal as the best player in the competition in 2008.
Lloyd even admits the club had tracked him from a young age.
“I reckon I was playing as hard as I could and as best as I could all the time,” Ballantyne says.
“I can’t help that I was short, and that was the main reason I wasn’t drafted initially, I think.
“But I busted my backside for a couple of extra years and ended up where I am now.”
Lloyd says the club had its eye on all the mature-age recruits it has drafted, long before their names were called out on draft day.
“Having more time to assess a player gives you more evidence to support the reason for bringing the player into the club,” he says.
“All our mature-age recruits had not only the football ability, but also strong competiveness and athletic capabilities. And their maturity suggested they could play in the senior team quicker than most recruits.”
While none of them harbour any regrets at not being drafted earlier, being in the system has enlightened some of them to what they missed out on when they weren’t in it.
Lee Spurr would have loved to have the opportunity to train alongside such renowned professionals as Matthew Pavlich and Aaron Sandilands in his developing years.
Michael Barlow was envious of other players who had made it to the AFL.
“I had a few mates in the system and I knew the opportunities that they had in a full-time training environment,” the 2010 AFL Players’ Association Best First Year Player says.
“In the VFL, they do everything to provide you with assistance, but being a part of it opens your eyes to how resourceful the AFL system is and how fortunate we are as full- time athletes.”
On the contrary, Mzungu feels as though he hasn’t missed out on anything.
People ask me if I would change anything, and I tell them ‘no I wouldn’t’,” he says.
“I was really lucky to experience work and finish a university degree. I’ve got a lot of friends from that now.”
Missing out on those initial years in the system just fuels Ballantyne’s desire to stay in it now.
“I worked a full-time job and I learnt a lot from life’s experiences,” he says.
“It’s made me appreciate the position I’m in now a lot more. I get to live out a dream and get paid to play footy.”
Their extended journeys to reach the AFL has forged a bond between all of Freo’s mature-age recruits, a connection built on an understanding of the hard work and perseverance it took for them to get there.
Barlow says that includes his fellow 2010 debutant Alex Silvagni and 21-year-old ruckman Jack Hannath, who was picked up in 2012.
“We have a gag with the other boys that us mature-agers have done it the ‘school of hard knocks’ way,” Barlow says.
“The group of mature-age players we have here are grounded, hard working players, and that shows n their performance. They’re the kind of players I love playing with. You know they won’t take a backward step and they’re going to work as hard for you as they are for themselves.”
Freo’s success with drafting players in their 20s has opened the eyes of the other AFL clubs. Unprecedented numbers of mature-age players have been scooped up from lower levels and thrust onto the big stage.
The footy world will keep a close watch on Hannath this season, and then on the recruiting team during the draft period in November and December. Could there be another ‘Brad Lloyd special’?
“If they can play a role for the team, either immediately or through further development, we will be open to recruiting them, subject to how they fit into our list management model, which we place great importance on,” Lloyd says.
There is no looking back now for Freo’s mature-age club, no regrets, no ifs, no buts. The common theme among all of them is ‘make every post a winner from here on’.
“I might have gained four years in the system if I had gone the conventional way, but I want to make sure I’m making the most of every opportunity now that I am in the system,” Barlow says.
“I’ve come in as if I’ve only got one crack at it,” adds Mzungu.
“That’s been my mentality from the moment I walked into the club.”
It might have been a few years later than some, but all that matters is he and the other mature-age recruits got there.
