30 years of father-son picks 1988-2018: where are the ones that didn’t work out now?

Not every father-son pick becomes a Gary Ablett Jnr or Jack Viney. For a variety of reasons, plenty of father-son recruits didn’t quite work out. So where are they now?

Father son where are they now

Footy fans love the romance and tradition of the father-son rule in the AFL - particularly when it works for their team. Find me a Cats fan from the 2000s who has a bad word to say about the way it benefited Geelong…

But criticisms of its perceived unfairness will never go away, and the bidding system for picks is changing next year to better reflect the actual value of father-son candidates. Call it the Ashcroft Rule.

But what about the father-son players who didn’t work out? For every Gary Ablett Junior there’s a Marc Woolnough who just couldn’t get his body right. And for every Matthew Richardson there’s a Nick Jewell who’s one game for the Tigers sits alongside 62 Shield games and six first class hundreds for Victoria.

The father-son rule in it’s current format has been around since the draft was brought in, so we ran the eye over the picks that didn’t exactly work out to find out where they are now.

The criteria we used was very simple - you play under 50 AFL games, you make the list.