Charlie Comben on his love of music, bushwalking and not being your average AFL player
He loves vinyl, books and bushwalks. Charlie Comben isn’t your average AFL player — and that’s the way the North Melbourne defender likes it. He reveals his top-three live gigs and more.
AFL
Don't miss out on the headlines from AFL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Charlie Comben is determined not to be your average AFL footballer.
His journey of exploration has the 23-year-old testing whether he can give total commitment to his football while also juggling an extensive list of interesting hobbies.
Can he master his craft while also collecting vinyl, learning guitar from teammate George Wardlaw, preparing to hike Mt Kilimanjaro and hitting up Melbourne’s best live music venues?
Will his sideline interest as the co-host of the “200 Plus” podcast – he is also a voracious reader of fiction – distract or help him as he becomes one of footy’s best key defenders?
That same journey from the Gippsland town of Sale to Arden St Oval – which involves a short commute from his Carlton share house with Wardlaw and Jackson Archer – has recently taken on another curveball.
Comben’s exploration of Indigenous heritage on his father’s side from Gippsland’s Lake Tyers Mission is only in its formative stages.
But it is representative of a player eager to learn and expand his horizons while never taking his eye off his first true passion.
The evidence this season is that it is clearly working.
That he can juggle a hike at Wilson’s Promontory with a gig from the latest touring Britpop group while also going shooting the breeze with podcast buddies Sam Draper and Nick Butler.
If Comben isn’t seen churning up the training track at Arden Street you might find him in his happy place in the Melbourne institution that is Lygon Street’s Readings book shop.
He will be either flicking through the racks of vinyl records or recently released paperbacks.
Considered and eloquent, he’s a man in a hurry.
Is it possible to be a real human being with an identity outside of your football career?
“Yeah, I reckon you can,” Comben tells the Herald Sun on Thursday ahead of the club’s clash against Collingwood.
“Footy for me has to be the No. 1 priority because that is your job. And for a lot of the boys that is their passion as well. I want nothing more than to see this club succeed and that is what I have been working towards for six years.
“The satisfaction I will get from playing in a successful football team for North Melbourne will be grander than any satisfaction I could get from any hobby. But I think most boys can find a really good balance and in a way you can have it all.
“We get time off at the end of the season to explore hobbies. We get time in season to explore football and there is a good balance there.”
CHARLIE COMBEN
— TheKing (@theindextracker) May 11, 2025
Intercepting King! #AFLNorthLionspic.twitter.com/nhi8ei8f6h
Comben, signed to 2027, has an investment property in Moonee Ponds but his rental pad with Archer and Wardlaw in the heart of Carlton has the hallmarks of any university sharehouse.
Wardlaw moved in and didn’t buy a bedframe for his mattress for four months and has a willing pupil in Comben as he learns guitar and bass.
Says Comben: “George is exactly what he presents as. A unique sense of style, really into his music. A great lad. Always there to get a feed or a coffee, Georgie.”
Italian restaurant Capitano is a stone’s throw away, while further up Rathdowne Street local pub The Great Northern is there for the occasional feed.
None of those pursuits get in the way of training like a man possessed for.
Not for a player who grew up idolising Nick Riewoldt but soon found he needed distractions after a horrific injury toll across his late teens and early years at the Roos.
Those injuries included a broken back, a stress fracture in his tibia, a dislocated ankle and at least 23 total broken bones.
“I am probably interested in that cultural side of Melbourne as a result of my elder brother who went to uni at 18 when I was still back in school (in Sale). His influence probably pushed me into a different facet of music,” Comben said.
“I love my alt rock – ’80s, ’90s, grunge, popular rock like Oasis, the Verve, that Britpop scene.
“I have always enjoyed reading and moved into Carlton and to have Readings close is great because it combines music and reading with the vinyl section there.
“My old man collected vinyls for years and years and I took it up at 18 and I found more appreciation for listening to a full album the whole way through and hearing the intricacies.
“I feel like this off-field balance of enjoying other things away from football has held me in good stead in terms of being a multifaceted person and not just solely relying on footy for my full identity.”
“I watch enough football to be able to educate myself, to be able to perform on the weekend, but it’s not every facet of my life. I think at the moment, I’ve got a really good balance between podcasts, music, hiking, all these other hobbies that I kind of have, and then footy being my number one main passion.”
Comben’s grandfather introduced the love of bushwalking in the red gum forests near Gippsland town Briagolong and while Kilimanjaro is the goal this off-season or next he also has bucket-list hikes planned in New Zealand (Mt Brewster, the Mueller Hut Route).
Kangas coach Alastair Clarkson is on board with his players finding pursuits away from the game, telling them after a Good Friday belting against Carlton to clear their minds for two days then come back to the club on Monday ready to work.
For some players like Harry Sheezel that is leaning into parasympathetic breathing exercises and a detailed nutrition plan but for Comben it is the latest Andy Weir science fiction novel.
“Harry’s spoken a lot about that, and if there’s a continuum of football obsessiveness, we’d be completely separate ends,” Comben said.
“That’s not to say I don’t recover properly and do all my duties to the best of my abilities. Harry will admit he’s at the obsessive point of it. But the difference is that it is Harry’s hobby. That’s what he enjoys. So his hobby is his nutrition, his diet, his food, his meditation, his recovery. That’s what he gets genuine enjoyment out of, whereas I get genuine enjoyment out of playing the game, and then also these other hobbies that I have in my spare time.”
"I lost my mum in 2020 ... I'd love to have her here today, but I'm happy (I could do) her proud." â¤ï¸
— North Melbourne FC (@NMFCOfficial) May 11, 2025
Charlie Comben speaks straight from the heart following our draw with Brisbane.
🎥: https://t.co/fQGrZGTlMi#Kangaspic.twitter.com/DujuMwqmwq
Family remains everything for Comben, who lost his mother at age 19 and is only very early in his own exploration of his family history.
“I’ve been on a bit of my own journey recently as well. I’ve got Indigenous heritage in my family that we didn’t really know about for a long time, on my dad’s side, so that’s been eye-opening for me to learn about our family’s history and our family’s culture as well, and Jy Simpkin and especially (Indigenous welfare manager) Jarrod Lienert have been really accommodating in helping me learn about it.
“Dad always knew there was some history there. But my aunty went back and did some digging into the family lineage and then went and met a few elders from Lake Tyers, from where dad’s family was from.
“I don’t know how to word it, but it’s my great great grandfather who grew up on a mission in Lake Tyers. His son was taken away from him and the lineage comes from there.
“The club is going to set up an opportunity for me to meet an elder and walk through it and understand a bit more but it’s interesting to have that in the family and not know about it so it will be a cool journey to explore it but it’s very exploratory and at the early stages.”
Originally published as Charlie Comben on his love of music, bushwalking and not being your average AFL player
‘Probably thinks AFL is bloody easy’: Inside Don’s dream debut
They call him ‘Young Redman’. Find out more about the origins and journey of the Bombers’ newest cult hero from his former housemate ‘Old Redman’ here.
Toby 250: From ‘unassuming’ Charger to Giants legend
On the cusp of his 250th AFL appearance, we examine the surprising origins of Toby Greene’s career and the qualities that transformed him from an overlooked recruit into one of the AFL’s most formidable leaders.