Ruckman Sam Draper gave up soccer, joined South Adelaide and on Friday night will make his AFL debut with Essendon
There is making a splash to land a young gun and then there is offering a soccer convert $1.7m before he’s even played a game. But Sam Draper said no to the big money from the Saints. What can Dons fans expect from his debut?
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Who is this tall kid called Sam Draper?
It is a question that has been asked consistently in football circles ever since a 203cm, 17-year-old from the south of Adelaide decided to switch from soccer to footy.
Born in SA Draper, now 21, spent six years of his childhood living in Brede, an English village of about 1700 people, in East Sussex, near Hastings.
He started playing soccer there, originally as a goalkeeper, before venturing a little bit further out into the field – becoming a towering centre back – when he returned to Adelaide and played for the SA Panthers’s Under 18 and reserve sides.
But after years of watching his friends, and brother Glenn, play footy, he decided to make the code swap and ventured out to local club the Reynella Wineflies.
“He picked it up really quickly,” Reynella president Dave Denyer said.
“He must have kicked the footy a little bit with his brother, who was a really good player.”
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Three trials games and two months later, talk of Draper’s size and raw talent made its way to then South Adelaide Under 18 coach – now state coach – Tony Bamford.
“I remember having a conversation with the coach at Reynella and they were pumping up his tyres a fair bit and I asked some of the kids at South ‘who was this tall kid at their school called Sam Draper?’,” Bamford said.
“And they said ‘yeah, Sam is a really good soccer player, he’s thinking about playing footy’, so I said ‘well get him out and let’s see what happens’.
“So he rocks up and funnily enough his first training session he rocks up to is our team photo night.
“I thought ‘oh this is a bit awkward, here’s a kid that has come out to his first training session and we’ve got the team photo’, but he just jumped straight into the back and centre of our team photo.
“He only knew about half a dozen players in our team and I only met him once, so it was a good introduction for him at South Adelaide, but everyone fell in love with him pretty quickly because of his work effort and his want to learn.”
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Standing two metres tall as a teenager, Draper certainly stood out as soon as he got on the footy field – but began to get noticed for how he played, as he quickly took to the new sport.
“He rocked up and he was certainly tall,” Bamford said.
“He by far stood out at training because he was just so big compared to what we had at South at the time.
“And he fitted in pretty quickly in terms of his skill acquisition, he could move, his footwork was good for a tall.
“I think the fact he played soccer helped him out in that regard and we put him at centre half back for the first couple of games, to let him settle and work on judging the ball in flight a bit.
“Eventually he worked his way into the ruck and he got in the state academy that year … all clubs were starting to ask ‘who is this big fella playing for South Adelaide’ because there weren’t a lot of talls playing for South at the that time.”
An hour after ringing Bamford on the morning of the 2016 rookie draft, Essendon list manager Adrian Dodoro picked up Draper with the club’s first pick.
And the rise, and questions of who is Sam Draper, didn’t stop there.
Despite Draper being yet to play an AFL game for the Bombers, St Kilda was prepared to offer him a four-year, $1.7 million mega deal last year to solve the Saints’ ruck crisis off the back of some strong VFL form.
Not even a torn ACL in May last year scared off the Saints, but Draper turned down the huge offer to stay at the Bombers.
“The trend now in the AFL in terms of how they manage their ruck stock has shifted to recycling players from other clubs,” Bamford said.
“Clubs do look closely at recycling players from other clubs based off what they are doing in the VFL, and Sam was playing well.
“I remember talking to Essendon’s VFL people and they kept saying ‘he isn’t far away, he isn’t far away’ and then he goes and hurts his knee.
“So it doesn’t surprise me that other clubs were looking at him based on his VFL form.”
With good footwork, and an ability to cover the ground for a player his side, Draper has sparked intrigue ever since he shunned the round ball game four-years-ago.
Now, against Brisbane on Friday night, the AFL is set to find out just who that tall kid is called Sam Draper.