The story behind one of the AFL’s most notorious trades, the ‘Veale Deal’ from its namesake Lochlan Veale

Lochlan Veale never played an AFL game, but his unwitting role in a notorious trade will mean his name is always remembered by footy fans. He looks back on 21 years since the ‘Veale Deal’.

Twenty years ago the AFL dream of a kid from Colac slipped quietly away when he was delisted by the Western Bulldogs without an AFL game – or senior VFL game for that matter – to his name.

That kid was Lochlan Veale, and he was a key – if unwitting – player in the blockbuster trade that is known as “The Veale Deal”, when Hawthorn and the Bulldogs conspired to game the trade rules so Jade Rawlings couldn’t join his brother at North Melbourne.

But Veale was left in the dark until the last minute. And he had no choice but to go along with the trade that would carry his name for the next 20 years.

“I was pretty much the last one told,” Veale told this masthead.

“My manager Peter Lenton said ‘the options are, you get traded and try your luck at the Bulldogs or Hawthorn will pay your contract but you may as well not even be there’.”

One year earlier, Lochlan Veale wasn’t even thinking about playing in the AFL. He was doing Year 12 at Colac Technical School and playing under-18s for the Geelong Falcons as a bottom-aged player looking forward to another year in the TAC Cup.

Lochlan Veale juggles the ball. Western Bulldogs training at Trinity College.

But his parents talked to a handful of clubs, arranged his draft registration and even organised a draft watching party for him to see his name called by Hawthorn at pick 65 in the 2002 national draft. And then the phone rang.

“(Then Hawthorn football manager) John Hook called and said, ‘Congratulations, we’ve drafted you … can you be here on Monday?’,” Veale said.

“And my first response was, ‘No, I have graduation on Wednesday, I can’t be there ’til Thursday.

“Looking back 20 years later, I realise I had no lead in, no understanding – I’m from Colac. I had no real want or desire to move to Melbourne, I was just playing footy and drinking beers with my mates.”

His naivety might have contributed to Veale’s first interaction with his senior coach Peter Schwab. It was the day after his high school graduation and 17-year-old Veale and his parents left Colac early to get to Glenferrie Oval.

While his mum and dad were being given a tour, Veale was left alone in the gym when he heard a voice shouting behind him: “What the f--- do you think you’re doing standing there?”

It was Schwab.

“Then he said to me, ‘Get your f---ing arse out on that ground right now’, so I was straight into AFL training and I just had my T-shirt, random shorts and my runners on,” Veale said.

Welcome to the AFL, kid. Veale’s time at Hawthorn wasn’t exactly easy.

He was skinny and not yet 18 when he arrived and, despite showing promise during pre-season, he wasn’t in the club’s senior plans for 2003.

Lochlan Veale pictured in 2002 with fellow Hawks draftees Tim Boyle and Luke Brennan at Hawthorn training at Glenferrie Oval.

“I just played in the ressies at Box Hill for that year – I didn’t have much to do with Libba (Tony Liberatore, Box Hill coach) that year and it was just more, ‘find your own way’,” he said.

Once the season was over, Veale had planned a few days off in Queensland before he joined the rest of Hawthorn’s first-to-third-year players in pre-season.

But while he was packing the sunscreen and bathers and arranging airport parking, the wheels of AFL trade history were starting to gather momentum. It started with a Hawthorn salary cap squeeze that led to a low-ball offer to key position swingman Jade Rawlings.

Rawlings, in turn, requested a trade to North Melbourne to join his brother Brady.

Things got interesting when the Hawks weren’t satisfied with what the Kangaroos were willing to give in return. With the trade deadline looming, they cooked-up a deal that also included Essendon, which would benefit them and allow the Bulldogs to select the wantaway Rawlings in the pre-season draft.

So the actual trade didn’t feature Jade Rawlings. The Hawks traded the now 18-year-old Veale to Whitten Oval for pick 6 and Mark Alvey, a package they then on-traded to Essendon for Danny Jacobs.

It was a trade that would later be investigated by the AFL – but it was given the tick of approval of being within the rules at the time.

By the time Veale landed in Queensland, the whole thing was hinging on him agreeing to join the Dogs – and solving a very 2003 problem.

“I was running around Coolangatta airport looking for a fax machine – no one would let me use one, finally I had to give the bloke at Avis rental cars $50 to use theirs,” Veale said.

“Basically, if I hadn’t sent that fax back, it (the trade) wouldn’t have happened.”

Having left Victoria a Hawk, Veale spent a couple of restless days in Queensland while all hell broke loose in the footy media. He returned to Melbourne as a Bulldog.

And even though he was hurt and angry at how Hawthorn had treated him, he was determined to put on a brave face.

When quoted in 2003, he didn’t betray any resentment: “It’s just footy, isn’t it? I was disappointed at the start, because I’ve only been a year at Hawthorn, but I’m over that now and I’m excited about going to the Bulldogs.”

Jade Rawlings soon after being taken by the Bulldogs in the 2004 AFL pre-season draft.

Unfortunately for Veale, his year at the Bulldogs went along similar lines to his time at the Hawks – he showed some promise, but was ultimately not in their plans and was delisted at the end of 2004.

But early in that year, he did get a chance for some closure on the whirlwind that engulfed him in 2003, in the form of a long chat with the man at the centre of it all – Jade Rawlings.

“I didn’t have a hell of a lot to do with Jade at Hawthorn, but we were on a training camp at the Bulldogs … and he just tapped me on the shoulder and we sat down and had a really good chat,” Veale said.

“I remember him being pretty honest about what he was trying to do and he was really big on how I was feeling and if there was anything he could do to help and support.

“I think for him, on the journey he was on, to come over and have an open and honest chat with the 18-year-old who was just a little part of it was pretty big of him at the time.”

Now, 20 years on, Veale seems at ease with his role in footy history, but there is a sense of “what if” when he talks about being a pawn in the Hawks and Bulldogs’ game.

“Even once it was all done and dusted, it took a couple of years before I really sat down and thought, ‘Oh, that’s what it was all about’,” he said. “I ended up being a reasonable footballer in major league country footy around the state. And I think if I could’ve had a couple more years (in the AFL system), maybe I could’ve made it.

“It’s made me quite a resilient person. As an adult there’s not much that I can’t work through or fazes me.”

Lochie Veale in action for Colac in the Geelong Football League. Picture: Nigel Hallett

These days, Veale is still running around for the Colac seconds (“I turn 40 next year, I think that’ll be it”), where his teenage daughters both play underage netball, and he runs a business employing apprentices and trainees in the south-west of Victoria.

And while he says he doesn’t get recognised much as the kid from “The Deal”, his role in footy history helps him relate to teenagers.

“When we go out to schools and talk to them about futures and careers, it’s a really good little ice breaker,” he said. “This is my journey and the story of how I got to where I am today because of all that happened.”

And of course, when you have a room full of teenage footy fans, someone’s going to have heard of the notorious trade that sent pick No.6 and Mark Alvey to Essendon, Danny Jacobs to Hawthorn and an uncapped kid from Colac to the Western Bulldogs in 2003.

“Year 10s and 11s, who are big footy heads, will come up and say ‘I’ve got a question … are you the Veale Deal?’”

Originally published as The story behind one of the AFL’s most notorious trades, the ‘Veale Deal’ from its namesake Lochlan Veale