Former AFL recruiter Dom Milesi opens up on death of great mate Chris Toce

Some of the biggest moves of the 2024 trade period came under a banner of overwhelming grief. But 20-year AFL recruiter Dom Milesi says, it’s what his great mate Chris Toce would have wanted.

Dom Milesi’s heart broke when he received the text message he had been dreading on the last day of last year’s trade period.

The former Western Bulldogs’ national recruiting manager’s great mate, Chris Toce, who was the talent identification boss at Richmond, had lost his cancer battle.

The devastation and grief crushed Milesi.

His mind flashed back to when the pair sat together for Toce’s last round of chemotherapy treatment only weeks earlier when they chatted footy, and draft picks, just like they did as youngsters standing in the outer watching VFL footy at Box Hill.

They were two “footy nerds”, Milesi said, whose passion for the game helped lift the pair to become recruiting bosses at two AFL clubs.

Dom Milesi. Picture: YJFL

Chris Toce, former Tigers recruiter.

But as Toce’s health suddenly deteriorated late last year, Milesi felt helpless.

“I spoke to (Hawthorn cancer survivor) Jarryd Roughead and just said ‘What do I do?’,” Milesi said.

“He said ‘Don’t worry about bringing him another lasagne, just go and sit with him. That will be the best thing’.

“I’m so glad we did because it was magnificent. We talked about the game and about players and spent the time laughing about different picks and things.

“I said ‘I have to go and interview (eventual No. 1 pick) Sammy Lalor and he said ‘I wouldn’t worry about him too much, I think a few other clubs really like him.”

In a roundabout way that recruiters often use, Toce was saying the Tigers would take Lalor with their first selection in last year’s draft, so Milesi didn’t need to waste his time.

But then Toce’s condition went downhill.

Honouring our late National Recruiting Manager Chris Toce tonight. We wish you were here 💛🖤#AFLDraft | #gotigespic.twitter.com/NDw2iKFAyR

— Richmond FC 🐯 (@Richmond_FC) November 20, 2024

And Milesi’s phone beeped with the awful news he had passed just as the Dogs prepared to enter the final round of trade talks to seal deals for four players, Matthew Kennedy, Bailey Smith, Jack Macrae and Caleb Daniel last year.

Dogs’ football manager Sam Power urged Milesi to go home to his family, assuring him that they could deal with the trade business, so he could prioritise his grief.

But Milesi remained at Marvel Stadium knowing “it was what Chris would have wanted me to do”.

And in the background of the Dogs’ deals, he crunched the numbers and advised on draft positions for the next seven hours, taking in the normal tense and frenetic finish to the exchange period.

In between negotiations with other clubs, Milesi would pop out into the corridor at Marvel Stadium where other recruiters would embrace him with a hug and nod to Toce, including the Tigers’ team who had also been shattered by his loss.

And after it was all done and Milesi headed for his car, that is when the emotion poured out.

“I walked out and popped into the lift and then …” he said.

The tears flowed for his best mate, and his family.

Tom Brown points to the heavens remembering recruiter Chris Toce after a goal. Picture: Michael Klein

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said.

“Chris was such a good person, and had a beautiful family.

“The club was unbelievable. The staff there made sure I was OK the whole day, but I was just thinking of Chris and his family. His wife Melissa and children, Harry and Sophia.

“Looking back it was pretty full on.

“Sam (Power) was doing most of it (trades) anyway, but I was helping and we got through it all and got the trades done that we needed to do.

“We had the draft three weeks later, and Richmond obviously did a magnificent job.

“Chris’s boy Harry got to put in the first pick for Lalor and luckily (Richmond talent boss) Blair (Hartley) rang me first and told me because that would have sent me right off.

“So it was a pretty tough time, but knowing Chris, he would go ‘Mate, you better do your job now. Make sure you pick ‘em’.”

But over the next few months, Milesi’s view of his professional world changed.

Milesi is regarded across the industry as one of the top recruiters in the AFL, spanning almost two decades of drafting at Hawthorn, Collingwood and the Dogs.

He was responsible for one of the best picks of recent years, taking versatile Horsham playmaker Joel Freijah with No. 45 two years ago, as well as Collingwood star goal kicker, and 2017 rookie pick, Brody Mihocek.

Toce was also highly rated as the man who unearthed St Kilda gun defender Callum Wilkie from his recruiting stint at the Saints.

Wilkie was taken No. 3 in the 2018 rookie draft.

But after Christmas, Milesi quit the Dogs. He walked away from the job he loved.

The 45-year-old has a young family, including two daughters, and the rigours of recruiting including the travel demands on the weekends, as well as the impact of his mate’s passing, triggered the big change.

He is the CEO of the Yarra Junior Football League, a job he now loves for the dedication and passion for the game he witnesses from participants, coaches and volunteers, every day.

Instead of taking a few picks a year, he helps look after more than 9000 junior players across Melbourne.

“It was probably a bit unique in the sense that most people leave their jobs because they don’t like the people they are working for or don’t like the job they are doing day-to-day, but mine was neither,” he said.

Milesi plucked Brody Mihocek from relative obscurity. Picture: Morgan Hancock/Getty Images

“That is probably a bit unusual. And the Dogs were amazing.

“But it was probably a combination of things. Lifestyle. And the chance to broaden my skill set after 20 years in recruiting.

“I have a young family and a beautiful wife and in my job I was away every weekend from them.

“And the impact of my friend Chris passing had a fair impact on me and I probably didn’t realise that straight away at the time.”

Now, Milesi can have a quiet beer watching the Dogs each weekend, and one player, who he saw kick six goals from a wing in a Coates League game, Freijah, is one who brings him a lot of joy.

It is his best pick in two decades in the game, and that particular junior game was the day Freijah stamped himself.

“I was there live, and he played an amazing game. He kicked six goals and had 26 touches from a wing and I thought ‘Wow, this guy is going to be a pretty good player’,” he said.

“That year we picked Ryley (Sanders) and matched a bid for Jordan Croft, but our next pick was about 23 picks later or something.

“We knew we just had to sit there and hope (he would slide).”

As rival clubs continued to take other players, the anxiety kicked in for Milesi.

“I like to think I am a pretty calm kind of person but with about five picks to go, they (colleagues) saw a bit of a different side of me when I started seeing this could happen,” he said.

Freijah has been a revelation at the Bulldogs. Picture: Michael Klein

“It was probably the only time I have really got like that in my whole time in recruiting.

“Sam Davidson (No. 51 last year) was a little bit similar as well.

“But it is a credit to Joel, the way he has come out of it and attacked the program.

“His personality, you could tell when you met him just how driven he was.

“But the coaches were really prepared to trial guys in different positions to see what their strengths were.

“That is one of the big credits of the Dogs’ coaching staff, they never put limits on a player.

“It’s more like ‘let’s see what they can do in multiple positions and give them every chance to make it’, rather than just pigeonhole them.”

He also hit the jackpot with mature-age mobile forward Mihocek at the Pies.

At Collingwood, Milesi and former list boss Derek Hine drafted the Port Melbourne and Maribyrnong Park work horse as a defender, but he has become a star for the Magpies in attack, booting 259 goals from 151 games.

They are massive calls from clubs which make the difference between finals and footy failure.

Decisions which he said would keep him up at night because “you are always thinking about it. Every night. Especially as it gets closer to the draft”.

“‘Dekka’ (Derek Hine) should take the credit because is the one who read Mihocek’s name out, but he really did it the hard way,” he said.

“People forget he was All-Australian under-18, so he was a talented junior, but there was a question mark on speed.

“We seriously looked at him the year before we took him but we decided to go a different way in the draft and I rang him to tell him to apologise.

“I said just ‘give it one more year’.

“He was disappointed, but we rang him the next year in the week before the draft and I said ‘are you still keen?’ And he said he was super keen.

“We brought him in thinking he would be a pretty good defender.

“But I remember as a throwaway line when we did the handover we said ‘he has played a bit of forward as well, so don’t be afraid to use him there if we need to’.

“Credit to him the way he has gone about it. They are stories that I love.”

Finding Brody Mihocek has worked out for the Pies

Milesi also rated ruckman Brodie Grundy, who was the big slider in his draft year when the Pies nabbed him at pick 18 in 2012.

It was a 90-minute one-on-one workout with Joe Daniher in Europe when Grundy ended up with “a ripped jumper and blood on both of them” which revealed the fierce competitiveness beneath Grundy’s quiet and considered exterior.

Milesi still has moments when his recruiting mind kicks in while he watches a game. It is a part, he said, which will probably never leave him, and one day he may return to the AFL’s recruiting fray.

But whatever happens he will always miss the messages and chats with his mate, Toce.

And the thrill he would get when he would like one of his picks.

“People in the job love the game and it is a pure part of the game, still,” he said.

“You are watching people play footy and finding the next one you hope will go on and play, and just the joy of telling them their dream had come true.

“And the joy of them experiencing their first game. It is the most rewarding part of the game, or it was for me.

“With Chris, before the draft we would never really tell each other who we liked too much.

“But I always used to wait after I was involved in a pick and hope for the text, because it would say from him ‘good pick mate’.

“That is when I knew it was someone he liked and wanted to pick, too.

“And when there was silence I knew it was someone he wasn’t so keen on.”

Originally published as Former AFL recruiter Dom Milesi opens up on death of great mate Chris Toce