Concession pick Shane McAdam’s delight at Adelaide Crows AFL berth and anxiety-free draft night
IT will be even tougher for some would-be AFL players this month when the national draft is extended across two nights, leading to an uneasy night of sleep between November 22 and November 23. But not for one new Crow.
IT is November — the month hundreds of would-be AFL players sit through their exams to close their high school years and the national draft in the hope they start their big-time football careers.
For the first time, the AFL national draft will be across two days — November 22-23, creating a new level of anxiety for a large group of teenagers.
And one young man is ever so grateful he is not part of this group anymore ...
SHANE McAdam signed his AFL draft form in 2015 — and lived the torment of every teenager filled with hope of earning a call to the big time but left behind as 80-100 calls are made on draft night.
The West Australian never re-nominated for the AFL draft.
This year, as the national draft is drawn out across two nights for the first time, McAdam already will have been in the AFL system for almost three weeks having sampled pre-season training as a Crow drawn from the SANFL (at Sturt) via Carlton’s pre-draft special assistance perks in the trade period.
“I won’t be sweating on who gets me,” McAdam said. “Not needing to worry if I will be picked in the draft is my greatest relief. I don’t have to worry anymore.”
Rather than hand wooden-spooner Carlton and “problem child” Gold Coast priority picks in the draft, the AFL Commission opted to give the Blues and Suns the right to claim players in the State league system who had previously nominated for the draft but been overlooked.
G
old Coast gained three — and kept all three, including West Adelaide utility Chris Burgess, the son of the Bloods’ 1983 premiership hero Tony.
Carlton gained two — and traded both SANFL recruits, South Adelaide forward Nathan Kreuger to Geelong and McAdam to Adelaide.
Considering the Blues had the chance to reunite McAdam with his former Halls Creek Hawks team-mate Sam Petrevski-Seton, is there a regret in being signed as a Crow rather than a Blue.
“No,” says McAdam. “I want to play against Sam and beat him.”
McAdam joins Adelaide — after his standout SANFL season with Sturt — on November 5 free of the draft in which Crows list manager Justin Reid argues would have ushered the West Australian to the big time as a top-20 draft pick.
It is all academic now. In 2015, it was — as the AFL recruiting scouts put it — an “outside chance” of McAdam earning a call-up to the big time. This is despite his achievements at the WA draft combine where he equalled the running vertical jump record (102cm) set by Nic Naitanui, finished first in the 20m sprint (2.89 seconds) and second in the agility test (8.04 seconds) before an untimely ankle injury.
In 2018, McAdam — who grew up as a Brisbane fan while the Lions were dominating the AFL with their three-peat flags in 2001-2003 — will finally be an AFL player, adding to the forward mix at Adelaide with Richmond trade gain Tyson Stengle.
“It has not sunk in,” McAdam said. “And I don’t know when it will sink in.
“What I do know is I don’t have to go through that draft night again — and I don’t want to.”
The rise from the draft scrapheap of 2015 — and obscurity in WA and Victorian country football and the “off Broadway” amateur fields of the Adelaide Footy League — to be a pre-draft AFL recruit for the Crows is a story that makes for ESPN-style documentary.
And that first game in Crows colours next year will be an achievement for McAdam’s hard work — at football and life — after the heavy knock of 2015 and the belief of former Sturt and Essendon player Shane Radbone who for the past seven years has created the pathway for a group of indigenous men to fulfil their dreams in sport, science and the arts.
“It was just about offering opportunity,” said Radbone. “Who was to know what was to turn out from it ... but the way Shane has worked for his dream, he deserve this chance to play in the AFL.”
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au