Shane Mumford’s Bunyip coach revealed his famous sausage eating early in AFL career

THIS is where the legend started. As Shane Mumford hangs up the boots, we rewind to 2009 when the Bunyip club president created a cult hero with his revelations of the AFL star’s pre-match routine.

THIS is where the legend started. As Shane Mumford hangs up the boots, we rewind to 2009 when the Bunyip club president created a cult hero with his revelations of the AFL star’s pre-match routine.

ALAN Wright uses the word “mammoth” to describe Shane Mumford’s eating habits when he was playing first ruck for the Bunyip Bulldogs just a couple of years ago.

“We would have a barbecue at the footy club and he would have 12 or 16 sausages,” the Bunyip Football Club president recalled this week.

“He was a mammoth eater. A seriously big rig and, put it this way, you didn’t want him falling on you.”

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In many ways Wright can’t believe it is the same person who will be running around today at Skilled Stadium against North Melbourne, playing his eighth AFL game in one of the greatest sides of all time.

Mumford played all his junior football with Bunyip in the Ellinbank and District Football League and because of his size he was playing seniors at 16. By the time he was 19, the 200cm giant was pushing 130kg.

“He always stood out because he is just this bloody mountain of a man and that was when he was just a boy,” Wright said.

“He became really heavy and put on a lot of weight at one stage there because he wasn’t worried about making an impression in our league or anything like that.

“Then one day he decided he wanted to have a go at football and, really, he is an extraordinary young man to achieve what he has in such a short time.”

Shane Mumford takes a big grab for Bunyip before embarking on an AFL career.

Shane Mumford in action during his first season with Geelong.

Mumford, 22, now shakes his head in disbelief when he sees photos of himself from three years ago.

“The thing was I didn’t look at myself and think I was that bad,” he says.

“But I look back now and think, ‘Wow, you were a fat mess’. Some of the photos of mates’ birthdays and that, my face was huge and I had this big beer belly.

“I was that big and unfortunately I’ve still got the excess skin to show for it.”

He can relate to the hit TV show The Biggest Loser because he’s been there and done that, losing almost 20kg inside a couple of months in 2007, which was the catalyst for getting his unlikely AFL career started.

“I watch that show and say, ‘I’ve done that’,” he says.

“You don’t have to do the amount of training they’re doing but you just have to eat the right food, that is all it comes down to, the right food and a bit of exercise.”

For almost all of his life the “right” food had been any takeaway he could get his hands on. Not one vegetable touched his lips between the ages of four and 21.

“All I used to eat was rubbish,” Mumford, who now tips the scales at 104kg, explains. “I was eating junk food flat out. At work I would just grab whatever I could on the run and it didn’t worry me.

“Even though I was almost 130kg I was happy with my lifestyle. I was happy to go out on weekends, have some fun with my mates and have a few drinks.”

His amazing transformation from Bunyip’s sausage-eating king to Geelong ruckman started in 2006 when he rediscovered his love of football.

He capped that season by taking 28 marks in the local grand final, which Bunyip somehow lost despite being five goals up at halftime.

The qualified boilermaker was then encouraged to go down to Geelong by one of his mates, Jason Davenport, who had grown up in the area, but left to play in the Cats’ VFL team a couple of years earlier.

Davenport had got in the door at Skilled Stadium through a mate of his, Josh O’Brien, who happened to be Gary Ablett’s cousin.

After being used as a top-up player, Davenport got on the club’s rookie list before being elevated at the end of 2007.

He was delisted last year and played his first game for Port Adelaide last week against North Melbourne.

Shane Mumford was traded from Geelong to the Sydney Swans.

And then to the GWS Giants.

Mumford got a start in the VFL, playing six matches for the season as a top-up player and the rest back at Bunyip. He enjoyed his look at the big time and it got him thinking.

“I was still a bigger sort of a bloke and I was beating some AFL-listed ruckmen in the VFL,” he said.

“That gave me a bit of a kick along because I thought if I got myself in good shape, what could I be able to do here?”

From the moment the 2007 season finished, Mumford didn’t touch alcohol or junk food and, for the first time, started eating vegetables — cooked ones that is, as he still can’t bring himself to have salad.

He hit the streets of Bunyip, running up to 8km every second night with the fat falling off him.

His plan for 2008 was to play in the VFL somewhere closer to home, like Frankston, but when Wright saw him after two months of training, he suggested he should give Geelong a call and set his sights on getting on the Cats’ rookie list.

“When I saw him I said, ‘What have you done to yourself?’,” Wright said.

“I said he would be better off going back to Geelong and show them what you’d done because I think they will be impressed.”

They were blown away. He smashed his personal-best running times and recruiting manager Stephen Wells was called in to cast his eye over Mumford.

“To his credit, he went away and lost all those kilograms,” Wells said. “It was 20 per cent of his body weight and that gave us an indication that the penny had dropped.

“If you are going to be a rookie you have to have a bit of talent but you normally have to have some extra bit of drive, that something extra to fall back on and that showed he was willing to do something a bit extra to give himself a chance to get on an AFL list.”

A week later Mumford was a Geelong footballer and less than six months after that was making his debut against Fremantle giant Aaron Sandilands at Subiaco Oval.

Shane Mumford after announcing his retirement from AFL, with his 11-month-old son Ollie. Picture: Brett Costello

He played the next two games before making way for Brad Ottens who returned from injury.

This year he was again elevated off the rookie list when Ottens went down and has impressed his coach Mark Thompson, who likes his competitive edge and ability to also play as a tall defender.

“He has been really good for us,” Thompson said.

“I just love his follow-up and that is the reason why he’s in the team. He tackles and he joins in the game. He has really been terrific.”

Mumford knows he’s the odd one out when he looks around the locker room full of superstars, but he also knows that this is the life he wants and he’s never going back to the junk-food eating, beer-swilling blob from Bunyip.

“It is unbelievable how different I feel, just the energy,” he says. “Not even once my career is over will I let myself get back to that, there is no way.”

Wright admires Mumford and uses his fairytale story to inspire other young players who are battling through the ranks in country football.

“The best part was there were so many people who knocked him and said he couldn’t do it,” Wright said.

“And just out of the blue, off his own back with no real reason to do anything, he just thought, ‘Stuff it, I am going to have a crack at this’.

“And look where he is now, it’s bloody fantastic.”