Full school list of every future AFL player across the past 15 years
Which school is the best footy factory in Australia? It’s the great debate that has never been settled – until now. View the full list of where every AFL player went to school across the past 15 years
READING LEVEL: ORANGE
Footy-loving secondary students probably aren’t just aimlessly mucking about with a ball during their lunch breaks anymore – some of them are crunching the numbers, breaking down vision, hitting the weights or meeting with coaches.
In some cases, schoolboy football looks a lot like an environment that echoes the elite, professional programs seen across the AFL.
In the birthplace of the sport, the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS) – actually a private school network – leads the way.
Through the past 15 years of the AFL, Caulfield Grammar has produced a torrent* of talent, with 42 students making it onto a team list.
Brendon Goddard and Brett Deledio are a couple of the school’s alumni*, while Murphy Reid and Nick Watson are more recent draftees from Caulfield.
Haileybury College boasts the King brothers – Max and Ben – as well as the Brayshaw brothers – Angus, Andrew and Hamish.
The school also produced Josh Battle, Jack Gunston and Luke Davies-Uniacke as another trio of the 38 students from the College.
But while Carey Baptist Grammar School has only seen 19 of its graduating students play in the AFL across the past 15 years, its talent pool is loaded.
Nick Daicos, Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson formed the nucleus of a premiership in 2019, while Ed Richards, Darcy Moore, Andrew Gaff and Josh Weddle have all walked the school halls at the Kew campus.
The top three schools, and five of the top seven, are all APS schools. Only two non-Victorian schools – Henley High School (32) and Prince Alfred College (25) – feature inside the top 10.
But at what point in recent history did these schools become breeding grounds for AFL talent? And how much credit can the schools’ programs take for the players’ development?
THE PROGRAM
Schools are appropriately “education first, sport second”, but football programs often lean on the five-day school week to have more contact with players before they even get to game day.
Some schools treat their First XVIII sides as a quasi*-professional environment, equipped with a fully-fledged strength and conditioning program, prehab and rehab programs, individualised conditioning and constant contact with the coaching panel.
Carey head of sport Jack Joslin said the professional programming at school level has ramped up in the past decade.
“Once upon a time it was, ‘just come to school, play with your mates and have fun’ with no sense or option to do some ‘S&C’ (strength and conditioning) or education,” he told the Herald Sun.
“Having vision is clearly great from an educational standpoint for reviews,” he said. “Premier Data is used for opposition analysis, it gives us avenues to analyse the competition more broadly.
“Obviously S&C and high-performance programs, there’s more resources put into that space as well.
“A lot of those personnel come out of elite environments, some footy environments, that want more security than what they might get inside the AFL environment.”
Carey poached former Hawthorn’s head of S&C Luke Boyd, who spent 18 years – 12 at the Hawks – across a variety of roles in the AFL or VFL.
Former Collingwood champion Gavin Brown also joined the school as the head of football, while current Melbourne midfielder Jack Viney is a stoppage and midfield coach.
WHAT RECRUITERS LOOK FOR
It’s not necessarily the best player in the best team that catches the eye of recruiters.
While consistently strong performances will always be attractive for a recruiter, the full picture involves much more.
How a player fits into the system, where they go during tough slogs, and how they lead their teammates are all factored in.
Gone are the days of a 30-disposal performance being enough to woo scouts.
“The players are fully aware of the eyes on them each week; every game you go to you can see recruiters,” Brown said.
“They’re very conscious that every time they run out there, they’re on show and it’s basically a job interview every time you play.
“The biggest challenge is convincing the players that the recruiters are not just there to look at kicks, marks or handballs, they’re actually looking at transferable skills going into an AFL system.”
Brown said that scouts also consider whether or not a player’s character will be a good cultural fit.
“If you’ve got a player that thinks getting 30 every week is the vehicle to get attention, that potentially harms them, because on the other end the recruiters could come away and say, ‘Geez, how selfish was he? How are they going to fit into our program?’,” he said.
“Showing recruiters that you can fit in and be selfless while also impacting the game in a positive manner is more important, because then their natural skill and game will take care of itself.”
Scouts attend plenty of the APS games, watching from the stands, then meeting and chatting with players after the game, where their assessment of cultural fit becomes important.
ADELAIDE PUBLIC SCHOOL MIXING IT WITH THE COUNTRY’S BEST
In the schoolboy footy factory contest, South Australia’s Henley High is an outlier*.
But there are plenty of reasons why this public school is matching and surpassing* private schools, despite their deeper pockets*, when it comes to producing AFL players.
Through the past 15 drafts, Henley has produced 32 prospects who ended up on AFL lists.
It is the most by a South Australian school, ahead of Prince Alfred College with 25, and in the top 10 nationally.
Henley has academies for 11 sports and its football academy manager Ben Kane said the make-up of the program allowed the teenagers to really focus on their footy at the highest level.
“I guess I put it down to the fact that we get three sessions a week doing football as a subject, for these guys to fast-track their development,” he said.
“And all of the development they get is during school hours, so they are not impacted by any weekend or after school commitments.
“We connect and align with the SANFL talent programs, so we communicate pretty heavily with them and the way I guess we see it is we are working in partnership with the SANFL development programs to fast-track the development of these boys.
“And I guess we have seen a lot of success with that.”
Henley can boast top five draft picks in alumni Jack Lukosius and Izak Rankine – No. 2 and 3 in the 2018 “super draft” – while the potential No. 1 pick of this year’s draft, Dougie Cochrane, has also spent time at the school.
Kane said these high picks did help attract students.
“We did see a bit of a spike in the talent and the numbers applying, when you do have Jack Lukosius and Izak Rankine going at picks two and three,” he said.
“We have had Dougie Cochrane, who has also come through our program, and there is a lot of noise around him going No. 1, which would be a huge achievement.”
Henley used to play against the big Adelaide private schools, but a change four years ago to introduce a college-only finals format for the SAAS* First XVIII competition ended senior games between state and independent schools.
Instead, Henley has since struck agreements with other school programs in Victoria and in Queensland to play matches against.
Kane said while there weren’t as many games played as a school as there used to be, the program was still a strong one.
“I think the biggest drawcard* is that we do align with the SANFL* talent programs,” he said.
“Students can get their three sessions a week as a subject in football here at Henley High School but then they can 100 per cent commit to their SANFL development program.
“So between the two they are getting some great development and over the years that adds up.
“They can stay playing the best level of football on the weekends, which is your SANFL level and they are not interrupted by college football.”
POLL
GLOSSARY
- torrent: flood, a strong rush or stream
- alumni: graduates or former students of a school, college or university
- quasi: used to show that something is almost, but not completely or truly, the thing described
- surpassing: exceeding, going beyond the success of other contenders
- deeper pockets: an informal expression for having more money
- outlier: a person, thing or fact that is very different from other people, things, or facts, especially when they might otherwise be considered as belonging in the same group
- SAAS: Sports Association for Adelaide Schools
- drawcard: a person or thing that attracts people to a place, event or product
- SANFL: South Australian National Football League
EXTRA READING
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Teen AFL talent ripe for picking
Australia’s ‘Socceroo’ high school
QUICK QUIZ
- How many professional AFL players in the last 15 years went to Caulfield Grammar?
- How many have come from Haileybury College across the same period?
- Why isn’t a 30-disposal performance enough to impress talent scouts these days?
- Which schoolboy player is the potential No, 1 draft pick this year?
- Which South Australian school has produced the most number of players to end up on AFL lists?
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VCOP ACTIVITY
Girls in sport
There are many sports in which we’re seeing an increase in female participants. What sports have you noticed, or maybe joined yourself, where you have seen an increase in the number of girls now playing? How do you feel about this? Why do you feel this way? Do you think it’s a positive shift? Why/why not?