Dane Rampe says he hated footy before Sydney Swans saved his career
DANE Rampe’s AFL career reads like an AFL fairytale. But it wasn’t always easy for Sydney’s gun defender, who is making up for lost time.
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DANE Rampe’s AFL career reads like a fairytale.
In 2013 the stingy Sydney defender earned immediate promotion from the rookie list for a Round 1 debut with the reigning premier.
After one season retiring champion Jude Bolton chose Rampe to inherit his No. 24 jumper.
In 2015 he signed a rich four-year contract after expecting to be offered two years. This season he was elevated to the leadership group.
And soon experts including Matthew Lloyd expect him to be better known as All-Australian Dane rather than the owner of a moustache befitting a 1970s pool cleaner.
The AFL chapters write themselves. Success leaps off the page.
But a flick through the early words truly illustrates Rampe’s rise.
“I hated footy, and I just wanted to get out of there,” Rampe says.
He is talking about 2011. After playing in Williamstown’s VFL grand final loss, Rampe packed in his AFL dream and packed up his car to leave Melbourne.
He’d faced four years of rejection, all laced with disappointment of different dimensions.
There was 2008, when the Sydney boy was denied a real shot at the draft because of private school commitments.
Instead of training with the NSW Rams he was shooting hoops and playing soccer for Newington College and that meant the Rams wouldn’t play him.
“I felt a bit hard done by, so I thought I’d go down to Melbourne to give it a shot,” Rampe said.
“I thought I had something to offer.”
And he thought it would be easy.
“I was a little bit naive. There were blokes in that Rams team getting rookie-listed and I saw myself as just as good if not better than those blokes.
“So I thought it’d be as simple as going down for a year and getting my go.”
In 2008 NSW boys including Ranga Ediriwickrama (Geelong), Scott Reed (Collingwood) and Will Sierakowski (Hawthorn) were given chances as Rampe’s talents hid in the shadows.
But by 2009 the midfielder was on the radar.
Rampe, now 26, placed fourth in Williamstown’s reserves best-and-fairest and while he was unable to crack the seniors, he did get an invite to the Western Bulldogs pre-season.
That was before Michael Barlow put the VFL on the map and so mature-age recruits weren’t yet all the rage.
But the Dogs had one rookie place open and it was a battle of two.
“I think it was me and Patty Rose and they went with Patty,” Rampe says.
Rose was delisted without a debut and in 2010 new Williamstown coach Peter German transformed Rampe into the versatile lockdown backman we know today.
I went back to Sydney with my tail between the legs. I was a bit off footy, I’d lost the passion for it.
- Dane Rampe 
He played him in the seniors and he played him on the VFL’s best forwards.
Rampe was hardly beaten, but hardly looked at.
By 2011, Rampe broke under an unhealthy burden of pressure.
“I was down in Melbourne for one reason and one reason only and that was to get drafted,” Rampe said. “That pressure kept building and building and it wore me down.”
He’d relocated from Sydney to South Yarra to Williamstown to Docklands and was taking on “odd jobs” just to pay the bills.
There was a week or two of landscaping here and a day of labouring there — all fitted around ice baths, strict dieting and intense training.
“That was the toughest thing about it,” Rampe said.
“I was doing all this hard work and working hard on the field and I just wasn’t getting any reward.
“I stopped enjoying my footy and in that last year while we did make the granny, I was merely making up the numbers.
“I went back to Sydney with my tail between the legs. I was a bit off footy, I’d lost the passion for it.
“I’d kind of shut myself off to enjoying other parts of life and I felt I’d wasted the best three years of my life after school.”
In 2012 Rampe opted for a kick in the Sydney league as his life regained balance.
He was quickly ushered into the Swans reserves. It wasn’t in his script, and he wasn’t overly keen.
“I didn’t want that carrot to be dangled again,” he said.
Rampe played and played well. He was asked back again and again and then to Sydney’s pre-season.
“It was a free shot,” he said.
And a pretty cool one. Rampe grew up a brisk walk from the SCG and would return home from games dreaming of running through the Swans banner.
He was six when dad first took him along and he sat in the stands in 1999 as Tony Lockett kicked goal No. 1300.
“I was just enjoying training with the team I supported. It was more a novelty and my mindset was whatever happens, happens,” he says of that pre-season.
Then Rampe outran Sydney’s gut-busting midfielders, including Dan Hannebery and Kieren Jack.
He literally ran himself onto an AFL list, and hasn’t stopped since.
But what if there was no fairytale AFL chapter? Rampe suspects he’d be studying overseas, making up for those lost years.
“It’s liberating (looking back). The journey has made me be able to cope with the pressures,” he says.
“And I genuinely believe that had I been picked up when in Melbourne I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have been ready for it.”
ON THE RAMPAGE
‘A DIFFERENT CAT’
DANE Rampe owns the most distinguishable upper lip in the game, but not even he is sold on the retro-style moustache.
The Sydney Swans star and keen surfer says there is no killer story behind its growth.
“I don’t know if I overly like, it’s just become a thing,” Rampe said.
“I can’t see it going at any stage, but in the same breath I don’t love it.”
Rampe has combated some pointed words from over the fence as he has blanketed some of the strongest forwards this year but is unfazed by the feedback.
Former teammate Jude Bolton — who gave Rampe his decorated No. 24 jumper — reveals a bit about the man.
“You only need to look at the moustache and the flowing locks to know he’s a different cat off the field,” Bolton said.
“I tapped him on the shoulder on the bus after my final game in Perth (the 2013 preliminary final) about taking my number.
“I was actually a bit worried he wasn’t going to accept it.
“I just wanted to see someone I love watching play and enjoyed playing with (wear it) and it gives me great pride.”
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