How Shane McAdam salvaged his AFL dream with help from a special mentor in Adelaide
SHANE McAdam starts AFL pre-season training with the Crows next month after a staggering journey in football and life that has taken him from the Kimberleys, Claremont, to running away from country Victoria and hiding in Adelaide in a ‘Mr Chip’ costume.
- McAdam becomes a Crow
- Sturt star shines at AFL Draft combine
- SANFL goal, mark of the year contenders
- From pies to Crows: McAdam’s dream recipe
MOST people on the 4.28 morning train from Wangaratta to Melbourne buy return tickets.
Shane McAdam was on a one-way trip — unsure of his final destination, but eager to be wherever there was a line to the AFL.
The journey — which started from Halls Creek in the Kimberleys eight years ago — ends at West Lakes on November 5 when the 23-year-old West Australian becomes one of the new members of the Crows squad at pre-season training.
And as former Sturt and Essendon player Shane Radbone, McAdam’s Adelaide-based guardian angel in this Ripley’s tale, says: “This is a story (to the AFL draft) that breaks the mould.”
How many would-be AFL draftees run away on the 4.28am from Wangaratta on a Thursday to be waving down traffic a few days later outside the Cheap as Chips store on Belair Rd, Mitcham, as “Mr Chip”, believing it to be the pathway to an AFL career?
McAdam’s eight-year story from a township of 1200 people in WA’s northwest, to WAFL club Claremont, back to east Kimberleys, to country Victoria, to amateur football with Scotch Old Collegians, to SANFL club Sturt and finally to the Adelaide Football Club via a special assistance pick at Carlton is so far from the norm that every chapter is more mind-boggling than the previous.
But there is one point — and one man — who ensured McAdam also did not become another sad tale of a remarkable talent lost to the Australian game.
On March 23 last year — that Thursday when McAdam boarded that 4.28 train from Wangaratta — another of Halls Creek’s growing list of AFL aspirants, Sam Petrevski-Seton, was to make his AFL debut for Carlton in the league season-opener against Richmond at the MCG.
McAdam packed a suitcase, bought a one-way ticket — because he was not coming back — and thought he was staying with his cousin Petrevski-Seton in Melbourne until he could work out his next move to revive his AFL dream.
He was in Adelaide the next day, in hiding — at Wayville — as Howlong Football Club coach Joel Price was searching for the prize recruit he had eagerly announced as a coup signing 17 days earlier. The press release on McAdam’s achievements in the WAFL — and his rewriting of some of West Coast hero Nic Naitanui’s records in the WA AFL draft combine — makes impressive reading … and underlines why Price was sending out search parties across Wangaratta.
Radbone’s family home in Adelaide’s southern edge had long been a sanctuary for young indigenous men seeking that “lucky break” to fulfil their dreams. It was one of the first boarders, Brandon Skeen, who in 2012 first told Radbone of the extraordinary football talent from his home base at Halls Creek.
At that point, the “traditional” path to the AFL was before McAdam, the nephew of Central District’s 1989 Magarey Medallist Gilbert McAdam.
In 2013, when 15, McAdam was completing his studies at a boarding school in Perth.
In 2014, he is at WAFL club Claremont earning a midfield berth in the reserves and — as McAdam puts it — “having fun playing with my mates; I wasn’t thinking anything of it”.
That was until he was sidelined with a severe throat injury after accidentally taking an elbow to the neck from an opponent trying to break one of his tackles.
In 2015, after a complete pre-season, McAdam immediately broke into the Claremont league ranks, being converted from a midfielder to a forward for the season-opener. In 11 senior games, he created a highlight reel that still works over the view counters on social media.
“As soon as you see that footage,” says Radbone, “you think the kid can play.”
Despite impressive notes from the WA draft combine, no AFL scout or recruiting manager thought the same way. McAdam was not drafted after having his hopes built up. He did not take the rebuff well.
In 2016, McAdam was back at Halls Creek, working as a refrigeration mechanic, playing with the Halls Creek Hawks.
“Just hanging out in the goalsquare, having some fun,” McAdam says. He also was hanging out with the wrong crowd having the wrong fun in a township where youth is easily put on a bad path by boredom.
In 2017, McAdam packed his bags for the Victorian country circuit, signing a contract he never understood with Howlong, believing it was the passage to the VFL and then the AFL. After two weeks and one trial game, he knew he had made a mistake.
That 4.28am train to Melbourne was the escape with no safety net.
Skeen had his ambition to become an aeronautic engineer fulfilled by Radbone’s support.
McAdam would get his AFL dream revived in the same way.
“Shane needed an opportunity — that’s all he needed — but it was not going to be at Wangaratta,” Radbone said. “He needed to be on the pathway to the AFL in the WAFL or SANFL. Without it, who knows what would have happened … he was a long way back (from many would-be AFL draftees).”
Before taking the flight to Melbourne to bring McAdam to Adelaide, Radbone asked his would-be new boarder to answer from three choices why he wanted to play football — fun, money or to get drafted.
“I thought he was going to say money — and he wasn’t coming to Adelaide to do that,” said Radbone, a 1989 AFL draftee (pick No. 46) to Essendon.
McAdam answered he wanted to be drafted. At 88kg (eight more than his current playing weight) — and after more than 18 months off the football map — that goal was going to take some work.
“It meant one full year in the amateurs (with Scotch),” said Radbone.
And working two jobs — one at Cheap As Chips, the other packing boxes and stacking pallets at a warehouse managed by former Port Adelaide SANFL defender Tony Giles — while advancing an electrical apprenticeship.
Halfway through the 2017 Adelaide Footy League season, South Adelaide coach Garry Hocking offered him the chance to join the SANFL Panthers.
Radbone had McAdam stay the course. He used his connections at Sturt to open the door at Unley for McAdam … but only to a trial with 59 other candidates, all chasing four spots on the Double Blues’ list.
“They were dubious,” said Radbone, who played 77 league games with Sturt.
“Understandable … Shane had been off the radar for more than a year.”
McAdam finished 2018 heavily chased by four AFL clubs — Gold Coast and Carlton with the special assistance option outside the draft; Adelaide and Collingwood, with Magpies coach Nathan Buckley making a video presentation to McAdam.
He joins the Crows with list manager Justin Reid marking him a top-20 draft prospect had Adelaide not taken the opportunity to grab him, via the Mitch McGovern trade to Carlton.
That 4.28 ride from Wangaratta is now the best move McAdam has made, hoping no-one would see him run … until the next one unfolds through an opposition defence at Adelaide Oval or the MCG.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au