The resilience behind Richmond premiership star Jack Graham’s remarkable rise in the AFL
SOUTH Australia’s Jack Graham has had a quick and remarkable rise to premiership player with Richmond and now has a chance at chasing another flag — but his road to success has not been without bumps.
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AT a quick glance, Jack Graham’s rise through AFL ranks look like a Boy’s Own adventure, storybook stuff with all the trimmings.
Graham, still a teenager recruited from Tea Tree Gully and North Adelaide, debuted in Round 22 last year and won an AFL premiership just few weeks later as the youngest player on the ground.
Before receiving his medal, he had silenced his childhood idol Rory Sloane in a fine tagging job and was among the votes for the Norm Smith Medal.
It gets better.
He has now lost only two games from 22 AFL matches — none at the MCG — and gets the chance to chase his second premiership with the highly fancied Richmond at the tender age of 20.
Add to that the fact that all of his league football has been on the biggest stage; his first 22 games have been before an average crowd of 61,635 people and he has played in front of more than 90,000 fans five times.
And add to that having been the Larke Medallist as the country’s best player in the under-18 carnival before he was drafted, a long list of premierships in junior ranks with Tea Tree Gully and North Adelaide and a stint of training with Port Adelaide before he was drafted.
But behind the very public success story Graham has had to deal of injuries that could have floored lesser young man, dealt with spending countless days in rehab as a young man in a new city and with his future uncertain for much of his early days at Punt Road.
His father, former West Torrens and Woodville-West Torrens utility Jeff, calls his son a leprechaun, one with the luck of the Irish, for his ability to land on his feet.
But if he could pick one quality that made him more proud than the achievements, it is the resilience he has shown over the years in overcoming setbacks.
“Everyone remembers the fairytale finish but with a broken ankle, going over to Victoria away from home not being able to play footy wasn’t the greatest start for him,” Jeff said. “This year he had that dislocated left shoulder.
“There have been a lot of ups and downs along the way and we ride them with him.
“That’s what I’m the most proud of — his resilience. He gets knocked down but he always gets up again and things seem to work out for him.
“With the draft (he slid to No. 53) he couldn’t do the combine because he’d torn the quad off the bone.
“Everybody thought he’d slide and there was a reason for that.
“There’s a bit of resilience in there as well but he’s like a Leprechaun; he’s played in a grand final almost every year of his life.
“I thought when he went to Richmond that trend was going to stop but it didn’t.”
Finally, things have settled down a bit for Graham.
He will have surgery on his shoulder once the season is finished, but life has taken on more of a routine with carpentry studies, regular visits from parents Jeff and Sue and sisters Keeley, 12, and Jennifer, 26.
Former state coach and Magarey Medallist Brenton Phillips, who worked closely with Graham in the under-18s, still catches up with Graham from time to time.
He still admires the qualities he brings to the game.
Graham does the little things that often goes unnoticed by the crowd — never by coaches — such as smothers, tackles and other pressure acts.
“The games I’ve watched him he just does what I call ‘Jack Graham things’: he’s just percentage player who tackles hard, puts on pressure and speaking to the Richmond recruiting staff they love him for that.
“He might not get a lot of the ball but what he provides defensively and pressure-wise they think is enormous.
Xavier Clarke, the Tigers’ midfield development coach, spent a decade in the game as a player with St Kilda and Brisbane.
He knows how long it can take some teammates to find their feet, especially when they are young and injured, but noted something different about Graham when he first arrived at Richmond.
“If he wasn’t injured he probably would have played more,” Clarke said. “It took a little bit longer than we expected but once he got it right he certainly worked his way in.
“Having been the South Australian captain he’s obviously a natural leader and the other thing is that he worked before he got drafted so he’s been out in the world, which helps.
“A lot of players earn their respect when they start playing footy; he earned respect straight away by the way he trained and applied himself to his rehab.
“Straight away the older players saw what he could bring to the football club.”
In a way, this year feels like Graham’s first.
Once he finally rid himself of injury and received a call-up, everything happened at breakneck speed.
This year, he is taking in every moment.
“It’s pretty crazy,” he said on AFL Tonight last week. “I’m just enjoying my time at Richmond and I’m really excited about the next couple of weeks ahead.
“We just want that success again and that ultimate feeling.
“It’s still crazy what happened (last year).
“I feel a bit more in the team this year playing a fair few games.
“I’m really experiencing what the AFL life is about.”