What Carlton, North Melbourne, Adelaide and Port Adelaide line-ups would look like if AFL stars could join their favourite team
Rival superstars would be lining up for Carlton and North Melbourne if romance played a role in AFL recruiting. Here’s what the Blues, Roos, Crows and Port Adelaide teams might look like if stars played for the club they grew up supporting.
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Playing in the AFL for the team you love is every footy fan’s dream.
Sadly, in the cut-throat AFL industry it rarely happens. But that doesn’t mean we can’t imagine what the competition would look like if recruiting had an element of romance.
Adam Treloar and Dylan Shiel would be playing for Carlton, Jake Stringer would be kicking goals for North Melbourne and the Port Adelaide captain would be on the other side in a Showdown.
Scroll down to see the teams we’ve picked made up of players who barracked for Carlton, North Melbourne, Adelaide and Port Adelaide as kids. And check back all week as we reveal what more teams would look like if AFL (and AFLW) stars could pay for the team they grew up barracking for.
CARLTON
It’s a shame Sam Docherty’s dad never saw him play for the Blues.
“I was brainwashed from birth into supporting Carlton by my Blues-mad father, Eddie,” he recently wrote in the Herald Sun.
Sadly, Eddie passed away in the off-season after Docherty was traded from Brisbane in 2013.
“Winning the Blues’ best and fairest and becoming a club captain has meant so much to me because it means my surname is etched in the Carlton history,” Docherty wrote.
The Blues co-captain could lead this side packed with childhood Blues fans, one of the most popular teams among the AFL playing fraternity.
Tom Mitchell, Travis Boak, Ollie Wines, Dylan Shiel (“massive Blue boy growing up”) and Adam Treloar make for a powerful midfield, and we’ve brought Essendon champ Matthew Lloyd out of retirement to stand in the goalsquare.
Lloyd was a huge Blues fan as a kid and could have played for the club he loved if the AFL didn’t change the father-son rule — his father John played 29 games (in the No.18) jumper in the 1960s.
Another near-miss was Brendon Goddard, who was set to become a Carlton player until the Blues lost the No.1 pick in 2002 as part of their huge penalties for salary cap breaches.
“I had my eyes set on Carlton. Like any kid growing up, it was a dream to play for the team you follow and essentially I was following that path until other circumstances got in the way,” he told the AFL website years later
“I was at my sister’s house by myself in Melbourne when the phone call came through at 11.30 at night from Shane O’Sullivan informing me they had lost their draft picks. It was pretty deflating, to be honest. But … at that age you don’t get a choice of where you go.”
BLUES FANS BEST 22
Team of players who grew up barracking for Carlton
B: Sam Docherty, Nathan Brown, Shannon Hurn
HB: Jack Crisp, Brendon Goddard, Bachar Houli
C: Isaac Smith, Ollie Wines, Dylan Shiel
HF: Travis Boak, Jasmine Garner, Luke Parker
F: Jack Silvagni, Matthew Lloyd, Levi Casboult
Foll: Matthew Leuenberger, Tom Mitchell, Adam Treloar
Inter: Kamdyn McIntosh, Matt Rowell, Steph Chiocci, Adam Cooney
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NORTH MELBOURNE
If AFL recruiting was based on which teams players supported as kids, the Kangaroos would have one of the strongest line-ups in the competition.
Some teams in this series are using part-time ruckmen, but not the Roos. Premiership big man Ben McEvoy grew up on his family farm near Mount Beauty wearing a North Melbourne jumper with Mick Martyn’s No.4 on the back.
Brisbane backman Alex Witherden, meanwhile, has dibs on the No.29 guernsey after wearing it for 54 games at the Lions — and a long time before that.
“Boomer Harvey was my favourite player growing up so I wore 29 all through my Auskick days and when the number was available here I thought that’d be a beauty to get on the back,” he said in his debut AFL season.
A career highlight for Jacob Hopper was playing against Harvey, also his childhood hero, in his first season as a Giant, while Caleb Marchbank had Harvey posters on his walls but says his favourite player was Andrew Swallow.
Father-son picks like Luke McDonald and Bailey Scott grew up in Kangaroos families, while Josh Caddy also has strong North family ties - his grandfather John Reeves played 102 games for the Roos in the post-war years and his uncle played 23 games in the 1980s. it also helped having some of the biggest names in the game to cheer for.
“I went for North Melbourne, going and watching Wayne Carey, Glenn Archer, blokes like that run around ... at the ’G back in the ’90s,” he said after being drafted
ROOS FANS BEST 22
Team of players who grew up barracking for North Melbourne
B: Luke McDonald, Caleb Marchbank, Harry Cunningham
HB: Brandon Ellis, Alex Witherden, Bryce Gibbs
C: Dan Hannebery, Monique Conti, Josh Caddy
HF: Jake Melksham, Paddy Ryder, Jake Stringer
F: Josh Schache, Alex Sexton, Caitlin Greiser
Foll: Ben McEvoy, Jacob Hopper, Marc Murphy
Inter: Callum Sinclair, Bailey Scott, Joel Crocker, Sam Flanders
ADELAIDE
It’s sacrilege.
The Port Adelaide captain was a Crows supporter. But he swears he isn’t any more.
“I used to be a huge Crows fan, especially in the 1997-98 (premiership) days, but it didn’t take me long to turn on the Crows,” Tom Jonas told The Advertiser in 2018.
“We hate them and want to beat them.”
He’s not the only big Power name who once barracked for their Showdown nemesis - Kane Cornes took after the team his dad coached from 1991-94. “I loved the Bays (Glenelg), I loved the Crows, and I absolutely hated Port Adelaide,” he wrote in his book.
Other members of a team of childhood Crows fans include Broken Hill’s favourite son Taylor Walker and Eddie Betts, who grew up in Port Lincoln idolising Andrew McLeod.
McLeod is also responsible for perhaps the most surprising member of the team - Devon Smith, who hails from Lara outside Geelong but after a chance meeting with McLeod as a kid decided to barrack for the Crows.
There is one big reason Crows fans would support changing recruiting rules to allow players to play for the team they support — it would finally allow them to see Matthew Pavlich in a Crows jumper.
Former Cat Andrew Mackie wins a spot on the bench on the basis of this amazing picture of him during the 1997 Grand Final.
CROWS FANS BEST 22
Team of players who grew up barracking for Adelaide
B: Tom Jonas, Harry Taylor, Joel Patful
HB: Wayne Milera, Jack Lukosius, Hamish Hartlett
C: Jack Graham, Curtly Hampton, Devon Smith
HF: Abbey Holmes, Matthew Pavlich, Jesse Hogan
F: Eddie Betts, Taylor Walker, Izak Rankine
Foll: Sam Jacobs, Kane Cornes, Alex Neal-Bullen
Inter: Billy Frampton, Jordan Murdoch, Justin Clarke, Andrew Mackie
PORT ADELAIDE
Brisbane star Lachie Neale grew up hating the Lions.
As a passionate Port Adelaide fan in Kybybolite, 300km southeast of Adelaide, he could only watch as Michael Voss and Co beat up on the Power.
“I used to barrack for Port. We often were losing to the Lions in my childhood,” he said last year.
Neale was drafted by Fremantle (with pick 58 if you don’t mind) and moved to Brisbane at the end of 2018, but he gets to pull on a Port jumper in this fantasy team that imagines AFL players getting to play for the team they supported as kids.
In a two-team town surprisingly few Crows players grew up as Port fans. Brodie Smith is one, but he could be forgiven for being a bit confused.
He was a regular in the AAMI Stadium terraces as a kid and his dad swas a club sponsor. But his mum barracked for the Crows, the team that recruited him in 2010.
“Obviously growing up I was a Port supporter, so it’s different in that aspect that I’m playing for the Crows,’’ Smith said in 2012.
“I’m 100 per cent a Crow now, so Port is just another team ... and has become the enemy.’’
PORT FANS BEST 22
Team of players who grew up barracking for Port Adelaide
B: Jared Poulton, Darren Mead, Jackson Mead
HB: Callum Ah Chee, Ryan Burton, Brodie Smith
C: Jared Polec, Scott Thompson, Steven Motlop
HF: Nakia Cockatoo, Erin Phillips, Aidyn Johnson
F: Lindsay Thomas, Scott Hodges, Peter Ladhams
Foll: Matt Eagles, Mark Bickley, Lachie Neale
Coach: Malcolm Blight
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