Crow Izak Rankine talks meeting expectations, family and taking Adelaide to the AFL finals
In the lead-up to the Crows season opener, Izak Rankine talks life, learning, designing the Indigenous guernsey and why the team has an “internal expectation” of playing finals footy.
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Izak Rankine is embracing life at the Crows, both on and off the field.
The 23-year-old has ticked off one big goal for season 2024 … but says there are a few more to go on his to-do list for AFL season 2024.
Rankine, a proud Ngarrindjeri man, has designed the Crows Indigenous guernsey for this year’s Sir Doug Nicholls round alongside his childhood friend, artist Harley Hall.
He’s loved wearing the Indigenous guernsey, whether playing for Gold Coast or Adelaide, and jumped at the chance to be involved.
“When I knew there was a chance for me to design it, I was really excited,” he says.
“And I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
An orange community symbol on the back symbolises Rankine coming home, while a series of dots represents all the Aboriginal clan groups throughout Australia and the lines that connect them.
Symbols on the front show the players and their communities coming together, while footprints stand for the people travelling each week to support the club.
“This is a story about connection, about me going to the Gold Coast, getting on my own feet there and coming back to Adelaide, and being with my family again on my land and on my country” Rankine says.
“Then we have the names of all the Indigenous past players on the back, so it really talks about their contribution to the club.”
From here, Rankine has two clear missions: To try and get more minutes in the midfield and to help the Crows make the major round.
“More time in the midfield is probably my main goal for the year,” Rankine says.
“We’ve got a good enough group to be able to rotate a few boys through the midfield and even forward like me, Rash (Joshua Rachele), Peds (Luke Pedlar) … hopefully I can get a bit of a stint in the midfield and get the ball going our way.”
He adds that he’s done a “ton” of work over a gruelling pre-season to try and ensure it will happen.
“I’ve always been sort of naturally fit, but it’s a whole different fitness; it’s different than just running back and forward,” he says.
“It’s a lot of exertion and speed into every contest, and to make sure you’re ready and reading the play properly.”
He’s been working closely with experienced heads who know the midfield role – assistant coach Nathan van Berlo, Rory Laird, and skipper Jordan Dawson – who helped point him in the right direction.
“I think I’ve come to the point where I can go in there and play pretty confidently,” he says.
This will be music to the ears of Crows fans who often use words like “sky” and “limit” when discussing Rankine’s potential to boost their engine room, and to erase any memories of the narrow finals miss, after a certain Round 23 goal that was called as a point, in 2023.
Asked how important it is that the Crows play finals this year, Rankine says simply: “It’s really important.
“We have that expectation internally to play finals and go deep into finals.
“We look at last year and we know we can do it and that experience in close games is going to hold us in good stead for this year.
“We have an expectation to play finals, for sure. We all know we can do it and when you watch us train you can tell that we know what we’re doing.
“We understand our game plan and what we want to do in certain situations.
“I feel like the boys have grown so much in the last four, five or six months. We’ve grown heaps and we know what we want to do.”
IZAK RANKINE’S HOMECOMING STORY
The bright artwork shows a sweeping coastline, an orange pathway and a smattering of footsteps.
Among other things, it tells the story of a young man, still a boy really, leaving home to find himself, a little uncertain of what might lie ahead; of tough early years alone and yearning for his family; of learning independence, resilience, humility and a strength he didn’t know he had; and of finally returning into their arms. It is a story about country and, most of all, connection.
It is a story that pays respect to the many who have followed a similar journey, the many communities that support them and the bonds that join them as one.
It is a story told on the Crows Indigenous guernsey for the 2024 AFL season.
It is the story of Izak Rankine.
It’s a mild, sunny morning at West Lakes, a day or two after a 40C heatwave swept its way through the city.
Ben Keays leads a group of Crows players into the cafe at the base of their West Lakes HQ. Taylor (“Tex”) Walker poses for a selfie with a fan. A few small groups break off to share a coffee after the early session.
Rankine enters the cafe, all smiles and lower arm tattoos.
Sitting down, he admits he’s a little relieved at this moment in time; the gruelling and mind bending pre-season under fitness head Darren Burgess has just clicked over into season mode, meaning that while things will remain intense, the backbreaking preparatory nature of the summer training shifts into full battle mode.
He talks openly about the “ton” of work he has put in to build up his tank for an increased midfield role and the burning desire for his team to make the major round as payback for a certain round 23 goal that was called as a point.
Today, however, it’s clear the 23-year-old has a little more on his mind than that afternoon’s gym session.
He reflects on what has been a remarkable five or soyears, from being drafted in 2018, to battling homesickness on the Gold Coast, to returning home amid a whirlwind of hope, headlines and expectations, to reuniting with his big and extended family, to settling in with his new teammates, his partner, standing for something for his community and being a role model for kids.
He’s learnt a lot and, he says, has grown a lot.
He’d heard all the warnings: How the Adelaide media and the fans could chew you up and spit you out; that the city was a fishbowl; that you couldn’t put a foot out of line without being shot down; that $800k or thereabouts a year was too much for a small forward.
He knew the pressure was on and he needed to perform.
So what did he do? What he’s always done … he leaned in.
“Moving back here there was talk of it being a bit of a fishbowl and expectation from the fans and the media and those kinds of things, but I think I’ve handled it pretty well,” he says without a hint of arrogance.
“Personally, I take it all on board and I’m proud of that expectation. People want me to play well, they want us to do well. I hit it front on.”
With this came a responsibility he was equally happy to accept.
“I think my dad in particular instilled that in me early on,” he says.
“Even when I was 17, 18 and getting ready for the draft, he wanted to make sure I could play good footy, that I could meet the expectations. It’s what we’ve always been about.”
He has also learned how to add an off switch, relaying in Brodie Grundy-type fashion that “footy’s not my whole life”.
Away from the game he likes to keep busy, be it shooting hoops or playing guitar.
He loves to pick away at Jimi Hendrix, or Led Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd and he and dad Ronald, a talented musician with a love for old classics and the blues, will often jam together.
“Some people think you’re just a footy player but I’ve got a big family, I love playing music, I love playing basketball and other sports as well,” he says.
“Dad’s a good guitarist and he showed me a few chords, and then I just hit YouTube. You can learn everything on YouTube these days.”
He’s also teaching himself how to sing, albeit slowly.
“I play guitar mainly but when you’re there and you’re strumming a song and then you start singing it, you can kind of teach yourself,” he says.
Whatever Rankine’s approach, it seems to be paying off.
In a breakout first season with the Crows, he scored 36 goals across 20 games, polled fourth in the best and fairest, and is ranked as elite in several key indicators for his small forward role, one of the toughest positions on the ground.
A big part of that, he adds, is being back around his “mob”.
MY FAMILY
Rankine was in the changerooms at Adelaide Oval after Gold Coast Suns had lost to Port Adelaide in Round 15, 2022, when it hit him like a Dermie shirt-front: I really need to come home.
He was in opposition colours, it was an away game, and it was a shattering two-point loss. But the rooms were full of family and friends, many of them from junior footy days and his old school, Henley High.
“I’d always thought about coming home for a long time but then after that game, just being in the changerooms and having my whole family there, it was a good feeling,” he says.
“And then having all my friends at the game. I just thought about the possibility of having that every second week, and that was really appealing to me.
“That was the moment it really hit me and from there it became a reality that I could come home.”
The early days at the Suns were tough. Drafted at pick No.3 in 2018, Rankine struggled badly with homesickness and battled injuries that kept him sidelined for much of his early time there. It was heartbreaking; all he wanted to do was play.
Looking back now, though, he reckons that’s exactly what he needed.
He hadn’t been away from his family for an extended period before and he needed to learn self-sufficiency.
He needed to test his own strength and fortitude without a hometown safety net. It’s not putting too fine a point on it to say he went there a boy and returned a man.
“Looking now at that boy being drafted and I look at myself now and I think, ‘Wow, you really have come a long way,’” he says.
“That adversity was really rough, but it really helped me a lot.
“Whatever happened, I stuck at it. I was always determined to stay the course. I showed that I was mentally strong and when it did get tough, I never gave up.”
Eventually, he would settle and find his feet. The confidence would grow in his body and he would finally make his debut in Round 6 of the 2020 season, booting three goals against the Demons.
He then signed a two-year deal. His form was up and down for a bit, but in 2022 he exploded and forged a reputation as one of the most dangerous small forwards in the game.
The Suns wanted him to stay. Badly.
Co-captain at the time Touk Miller called him a “special person” and “special player”, describing him as “on another level when he’s at his best”.
It turns out the Crows wanted him more. The five-year deal was a big carrot, but despite what may have been written or said, Rankine says the final decision was based on one thing.
“Family is everything to me,” he says.
And a big, “tight-knit” family it is.
Rankine has six siblings (three brothers, three sisters) and footy was the pulse that beat through the family home in Mile End.
His dad played SANFL and represented an Indigenous state team, but Rankine best recalls him running out for Rosewater FC.
He still watches his brothers play for their suburban and country teams when time allows. His sisters also grew up playing the game.
“When I watch my brothers, I give them stick, and they give it back when they come to see me. It’s always good banter,” he says.
In the early days, backyard competitions were fierce and unforgiving, and Rankine can’t recall many times when he wasn’t running around with a chunk of leather in his hands.
“I remember being on the street out the front of our house in Mile End and we’d pick two trees, and then one Stobie pole and another tree across from each other and we’d just play, and kick goals and try snaps, and dribble kicks, everything,” he says.
“We’d always debate who the best footballer was; I think they’re still debating it. We’d watch the highlights on the tele and then we’d go on to the street and try to imitate them.”
More often than not it was his heroes Cyril Rioli, Eddie Betts, “Buddy” Franklin and Andrew McLeod (he smiles broadly when mentioning he’s taking McLeod’s Number 23 this season).
It was, he says, a happy time; his parents had moved from the northern suburbs to Adelaide’s west to allow their kids to be closer to the beach, which also gave young Izak a pathway into the popular football program at Henley High School.
It was at Henley that Rankine realised footy might offer more than just an outlet.
He was naturally gifted at basketball but was never going to be a seven-footer.
So when he started to dominate games alongside the likes of good mate Jack Lukosius, he thought he might be on to something.
“So it was really at school that I decided I really wanted to pursue the path of playing AFL and I just stuck to it,” he says.
There was never any external pressure from his parents, family or school to do so, things just seemed to take their natural course.
“Plus,” he adds, “there was nothing else I was really good at.”
And good he was, climbing through the ranks to make his SANFL debut for West Adelaide at 16, and starring for the state under-18 team (after the 2018 championships, long-time SANFL talent spotter Brenton Phillips said Rankine should be the No.1 pick in that year’s draft ahead of Sam Walsh, telling senior football writer Andrew Capel he would “win games by himself”. He ended up going No.3)
Phillips, who coached the under-18 team for a decade, now says it was more than his footy ability that set him apart.
“What really stood out besides anything else, was that Izak trained with pace and intensity all the time,” Phillips, the SANFL’s head of talent, says.
“That was from a young age and that’s really unusual for a young player to do that, especially the good ones. They just lope along because they’ve been so good for so long.
“But he had training intensity and standards that were off the chart.”
Now that Rankine has come full circle, the biggest issue is finding enough tickets to every home game or Showdown to accommodate his family and friends.
It is, he admits, a nice problem to have.
“Win, lose or draw I get to see everyone. Mum doesn’t really understand footy too well, but she gets to watch her son out there running around,” he says.
“Even when we lose, my mum’s always happy, my sisters are always happy, my family is always really proud of me and that’s a really good feeling to have.
“And you probably see the way I play, I do it for them. I try and make it entertaining for people to watch, but really I just want to make people proud.”
MY PEOPLE
You can’t discuss Rankine’s family without mentioning his Indigenous heritage.
To him they are one and the same. Mum Kerry is from Kokatha country and Ronald is a Ngarrindjeri man.
That lineage gives him pride. It makes him want to stand up for his people and his community and to embrace, without hesitation, his position as a role model.
When he first mentions his reasons for returning to South Australia, he says “because that’s where my Indigenous heritage is from”.
“I learned very early that you’ve got to represent and be proud of where you’re from,” he says. “It’s certainly a big part of why I play football.
“You want to make your culture proud. You want to make your family proud and you’ve got a whole mob behind you, pushing you to go forward.”
The Voice result was disappointing, he says, and the racism Indigenous footballers cop online year in, year out (Rankine was subject to it last year, sparking an AFL Integrity Unit investigation) is “terrible”.
“When you go out there and just try and do the thing you love, especially when you think about how much Indigenous people have done for the game – they’ve made it exciting to watch – it’s hurtful,” he says.
However, he adds in an instant, he won’t allow it to get him down.
Instead, he will continue to embrace his mob and his culture, to wrap his arms around his Indigenous brothers at the Crows and throughout the league, and to continue the process of education in the community, and to celebrate important dates like the 2024 Sir Doug Nicholls Round.
A key part of that is encased in a nondescript plastic bag on our table.
Rankine opens it and reveals the Crows Indigenous guernsey he was rapt to be asked to help design for the round.
He traces a finger along the artwork which shows his path to the Gold Coast, then his return to Adelaide Oval.
“This is a story about connection, about me going to the Gold Coast, getting on my own feet there and coming back to Adelaide, and being with my family again on my land and on my country,” he says.
“Then we have the names of all the Indigenous past players on the back, so it really talks about their contribution to the club.”
It was designed with his friend and artist Harley Hall, also a proud Ngarrindjeri man.
“I’ve known him since I was a young kid,” Rankine says.
An orange community symbol on the back symbolises Rankine coming home, while a series of dots represents all the Aboriginal clan groups throughout Australia and the lines that connect them.
Symbols on the front show the players and their communities coming together, while footprints stand for the people travelling each week to support the club.
Rankine was honoured to be asked to design the guernsey and wants to be a lightning rod for the kids in his community.
It’s clear he wants to leave a legacy that means something beyond goals and hardball gets.
“Being a role model is definitely important in my family,” he says.
“As you become older, you become more looked up to, almost an elder in that sense, although I’m not at that stage yet.
“I’ve got lots of nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters to look after so I just want to make sure I’m doing the right thing for myself so they can look at me and know they can do it as well, because a lot of people still struggle to this day in the Indigenous community, and it’s sad to see.
“But I want to be that shining light for them to know that they can do it and nothing’s impossible.
“When you’re stuck in a rut especially, you tend to think sometimes there’s no way out.
“And I just want everyone to know that they can do it, especially my nieces and nephews and my family and where I’m from.”
Shane Edwards joined the Crows at the same time as Rankine, the Tigers champion returning home to take on the role of Indigenous Player Development manager with the Crows.
He’d seen first hand Rankine’s on-field ability, but has been equally enamoured by what he’s discovered off the field.
“We were both new to the club and both trying to figure out how things work together and I’ve found that Izak has got a lot of leadership potential. And not just in the Indigenous role model area, but in football in general,” Edwards says.
“He’s is really up for anything and he’s a proud man. But he’s also very aware of himself. He knows the responsibility that he has for his community and to be a leader and to be a role model for everyone that looks up to him.
“People from all walks of life look up to Izak … and the way he’s handled coming back to Adelaide and navigating a different experience as a professional footballer – in his home state, with a very large profile and also having family around a lot – it’s been very different.
“None of that was present on the Gold Coast. And he’s come back and he’s handled it very maturely. He’s an unbelievable kid. And he’s going to be a very, very important figure at the Crows for a long time.”
MY ROAD AHEAD
Above and beyond everything else, Rankine appears comfortable in his own skin.
He’s settled and enjoying the relatively new relationship with partner Calista.
“We’ve been together for four months, and we knew each other from high school,” he says.
“She’s been really good for me to bounce things off of her. This pre-season has been really tough, so it’s been great to spend time with her away from that.”
He’s revelling in the close bonds he’s developed at his footy club.
“Coming into the club and training with your friends is what I’m loving the most,” he says.
“I’ve tried other individual sports like golf and tennis and I think the main thing I always look back to is the fun you have with the 20 or 22 other blokes that you get along with.
“You’re with your mates and you build lifetime friendships. I’m still friends with the people I played with when I played local footy back in Adelaide.”
He’s grateful for everything that’s brought him to this point, including his time with the Suns, and still catches up with his former teammates whenever he can.
He loves being a stone’s throw away from his family and talks about seeing his dad over the next few days for another jam, mentioning they’ve just picked up a drum kit to supplement the guitars and amps.
And he says he’s desperate to make the most of every minute, knowing that, despite the changes and challenges, the past five years have gone by in the blink of an eye.
“I’ve come to realise you don’t have as much time as you think,” he says.
“Tex says that, people who’ve been through the system say that, but as a young kid you don’t necessarily believe that at first.
“And now I’m sort of, hopefully, a quarter way through and that’s gone really quick.
“So I just want to make sure I make the most of however long I’ve got left.”
So what message would he give to himself as a 17 year old? After a wide grin, he says: “Stop being an idiot and take it seriously.”
The conversation draws to an end, Rankine finishes his coffee and gets up to prepare for the afternoon ahead.
Pleasantries are exchanged and a “good luck for the season ahead” offered.
“Yeah, hopefully I can kick more than 36 goals in 20 games,” he says with a laugh.
Whether he fails or succeeds, you sense nothing will be left in the shed.
The pressure and expectation won’t be going anywhere, and Izak Rankine – son, brother, friend, partner, musician, role model and footy player – will be owning every second.
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Originally published as Crow Izak Rankine talks meeting expectations, family and taking Adelaide to the AFL finals
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