READING IN THE DARK

by Whispering Jack

I recently took what was supposed to be a ten-day break from work and went up north to laze in the sun and read a book or two. My holiday co-incided with the gloom and doom of the collapse of the world’s economic markets and, at the same time, the news about my football team wasn’t all that flash either. No major sponsor, no visible progress with the MCC talks, the potential collapse of the Casey Fields deal, no gains in the trade week and acrimony over the future of Nathan Carroll. It seemed as if Melbourne was as much on the nose as any of the thousands of stocks that were plummeting on the All Ordinaries index.

Gloom and doom.

Thankfully, I enjoy reading books and this time I was well stocked. I had two football books and a fine piece of pulp fiction that goes under the heading of "crime thriller". I couldn't entirely escape the footy with that one because the author's name is Connolly (but not Chris - Michael). The reading was good and the contents of the books were in a sense inspiring and helped counter that gloom and doom in the news headlines both business and sporting.

The first of the footy books was Nathan Buckley's All I Can Be written with Ben Collins. It's an autobiography of sorts, one which is both triumphant in that it chronicles the illustrious career of a champion footballer who became captain of his club and won a Brownlow Medal and somewhat tragic in that it also covers the difficult relationship between Buckley and his father and his unfulfilled desire to be an AFL premiership player.

Just as he did throughout his career, Buckley pulled no punches in writing his book. As the title indicates, he wanted to be all he could be but was denied a premiership and the irony is that had a chosen to complete his original contract to play with North Melbourne, or had he remained with Brisbane, he would in all likelihood, have achieved that objective – and done it more than once.

The Kangaroos won the flag in 1996 and 1999 while Brisbane, which was a footballing basket case in Buckley’s only season with that club (1993) went on to score a hat trick of premierships between 2001 and 2003.

I couldn't help but reflect on this during my reading of the book and, for selfish reasons, would like to see others of more recent history who spurned a lowly club for the glamour and the money suffer the same fate when their own careers come to an end. Trust a book by and about a Collingwood player to bring out the mean and nasty streak in me!

Another side of Nathan Buckley was his transition from a youngster who some regarded as arrogant and a bit of a larrikin (FIGJAM) into the complete footballer and a leader of men as he matured at Collingwood. An uncompromising figure as a footballer, he became the ideal captain. In that respect, I can see a bit of him in Brock McLean and for some reason, I kept thinking as I read the Buckley story how the time is right for him take over the duties of leadership of the Melbourne Football Club.

In saying that I understand fully that McLean blotted his copybook with some errant behaviour in last year's off-season. Perhaps, he came under the influence of the wrong person or perhaps his head got a bit too big, but I have faith in McLean's ability to come back mentally and physically from last year's woes (which included an injury that ended his 2008 season early) and to demonstrate that he has what it takes to take this club's emerging young side into what will hopefully be its next phase of success. His appointment as skipper would welcome in a new chapter in our history and put an end to what has been a disappointing few years for the Melbourne Football Club.

I highly recommend Emma Quayle's The Draft. It's an enjoyable read that gives an insight into many aspects of the AFL's recruiting processes and it's one of the best books I have read on the subject of football, behind Richard Stremski's Kill for Collingwood and a couple of books by Garry Linnell (Football LTD: The Inside Story of the AFL and Playing God: The Rise & Fall of Gary Ablett).

Quayle, who is a respected sports writer for the Age, spent 2007 following the lives of five young draft hopefuls, all of who were ultimately drafted in that year's National Draft - Trent Cotchin (Richmond), Cyril Junior Rioli (Hawthorn), Brad Ebert (West Coast), Ben McEvoy (St Kilda) and Patrick Veszpremi (Sydney). She takes us through their experiences covering every day matters as well as the football side of their lives, culminating in their drafting and settling in at the clubs that chose them.

Each of the players has his own issues. Cotchin is dealing with the pressure of being regarded as close to the number one draft pick who is tagged out of the limelight in the national championships and not only fails to make All Australian but sees one of his taggers gain this honour. He also has to contend with the fact that his girlfriend is spending a great part of the year overseas at an equestrian academy. Rioli was taken away from home (Northern Territory) in his early teens and has to contend with life as a boarder in an exclusive private school in Melbourne. He doesn't interview well with many club recruiting officers. Ebert has to cope with being a member of a prominent South Australian footballing family. McEvoy lives in the bush and has to spend hours travelling to and from his TAC Cup team's training. Veszpremi is struggling with his fitness and needs a shoulder operation.

Their stories come together on draft day when the hopes of a couple of thousand youngsters are on the line and only about sixty will make it through at the first opportunity. A similar number get taken at the pre season and rookie drafts and some have another year to make the grade but the rest emerge with dashed hopes and disappointment.

Quayle weaves another aspect of the draft into the narrative by introducing the story of Hawthorn's recruiters as they follow the fortunes of hundreds of potential draftees in their quest to determine who will be chosen to wear the brown and gold. In doing so, she covers that club's long term planning going back to 2004 when the football department was restructured and Alastair Clarkson appointed as coach. At that time, the Hawks took an unorthodox approach to restructure their team by building up through the draft.

We know that in the end, the youth-led development plan paid off and it did so ahead of time thanks in part to an element of luck that saw them recruit Jarryd Roughead, Buddy Franklin and Jordan Lewis early in the 2004 national draft all the way to Rioli and the controverial selection of Stuart Dew with their final pick in 2007 and (as we now know) culminating in the ultimate success in 2008.

We even get a few insights into some of the potential 2008 draftees. Quayle was there when talented West Australian Tom Swift injured his knee in a warm up match in Perth on the eve of the AIS tour of South Africa. Among the players on that tour who were too young for the 2007 draft were the likes of Nick Naitanui and Daniel Rich. We also learn that bottom ager David Zaharakis, now a captain at Cotchin's TAC Club the Northern Knights, was under the Hawks' microscope but not picked last year. Could Hawthorn take him this year?

The Hawthorn formula is now in vogue and, although the circumstances can't all be repeated (for example, the priority pick now comes before the draft's second round and not the first) it's the pathway that Melbourne appears to be going down in preference to the cheque book acquisition of players through trades and other means currently being employed by Carlton. And it's noteworthy that Hawthorn had only one player in its 2008 premiership side who was recruited through the trades.

From Melbourne's perspective, all five of its 2007 national draftees rated at least one mention in the Quayle book with our top three rating several mentions. Cale Morton gets the most kudos but Jack Grimes' leadership capabilities do not go unnoticed. Early in the book, Quayle follows the AIS squad on its tour of South Africa. This paragraph comes at the end of the tour:

"At the post-match dinner, the boys had a final job to do. Each player had been assigned a quality and had to vote for the team member that best personified it. The award was named after Ben Mitchell, a member of the 2001 intake, who died in a car accident the following year aged only 17. The qualities were things like pride, patience, poise, care, trust, skill and sacrifice; the boys could interpret these things any way they chose to and the winner was Jack Grimes."

Here is a potted summary of the coverage each of the Demon draftees gets in Quayle's book:-

• Cale Morton - AIS tour of Africa, AA and National Carnival B & F. Looked upon has having good pace and quality delivery of the football and ranked by most as next in line behind the big 2 of Kreuzer and Cotchin from the Northern Knights. Fell to 4th because he was never going to be picked by WCE which had had enough of the Mortons after their experience with Mitch Morton. Highly regarded by recruiting people.

• Jack Grimes - AIS tour of Africa, AA and leadership and character written all over him. Some clubs rated him higher than his eventual 14th and the feeling was that his back injury caused him to slide a little in calculations.

• Addam Maric - AIS tour of Africa, AA and considered the best and most reliable kick in the draft. Some concerns that he was limited in the fact that he was a small forward and the challenge would be to ensure that he could develop into a more rounded footballer capable of playing in the midfield (I believe Melbourne's football department worked on this during the year and that the result will be one of the club's few notable successes for 2008).

• Kyle Cheney - mentioned only briefly during discussions by the Hawthorn drafting people as one of the draft possibilities from North Ballarat.

• Tom McNamara - AIS tour of Africa, SA rep in the National Champs and mentioned here and there in despatches (he's the youngest of all the draftees from all of the clubs so I wouldn't prematurely dismiss his future prospects).

If we can repeat that sort of effort again this year, we are well on the way to a revival that will come earlier than many might think and that thought leaves us with a lot less gloom and doom than many might otherwise be suggesting.

FOOTNOTE: You can read parts of Nathan Buckley's Book HERE, HERE and HERE and excerpts from the Emma Quayle book on line here - THE DRAFT