Bomber Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti's long journey to overnight success

Age football writer Emma Quayle was the winner of the prestigious Grant Hattam Trophy – for a record third time – for her feature article about Essendon's Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti. She traced the young Bomber's remarkable journey from Melville Island to the AFL through a candid interview with McDonald-Tipungwuti, his island family, his guardian Jane McDonald, recruiters and coaches.

This story started more than seven years ago. It wasn't even about football, at first. It began when a kid called Anthony Tipungwuti looked around his classroom on Melville Island one day, and wondered what he was doing there. He couldn't really read, and he couldn't really write. He could speak just a little bit of English. He wasn't even at school all that often; he had a bed at his aunty's house but mostly looked after himself, a 16-year-old going on 26 with either too much or not enough to do. His father had died when he was a baby, his grandmother was gone too, his mother wasn't around much and he spent a lot of his time on the streets, thinking about the things he didn't know.

"One day I just sat there at school and something clicked, something said to me that I needed to get out of there and see what else was in the world," he said. "It was a bit terrible growing up in that sort of environment just always thinking, 'how will I get out?' Something just came into my head and made me think, you have to make a chance."

He wasn't sure how to do that, exactly. But he did know someone who could help. Jane McDonald was on the Tiwi Islands at the time with one of her daughters, who was working as a house parent at the local school. She had recently lost her husband, and was taking time away to clear her head and heal.

From Melville Island to Tullamarine: Essendon's Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti.Credit: Pat Scala

Tipungwuti wasn't the only kid who would turn up at her house seeking snacks. But he was the first to ask if he could go back with her for Christmas, to stay with her and her four kids in Longwarry, and clearly the most persistent. "Me and my friend went down there, but we hardly left our room. We just stayed in there all day," said Tipungwuti. "We went all that way and we sat in that room the whole time, listening to music." With one (fun) exception. "We loved the ride-on mower!"

It was enough to want even more. Before Anthony went home, one of McDonald's sons took him for a look at their local school. Chairo College looked big, so much bigger than his school. He could see himself there, and knew straight away that he wanted to come back and stay.

"Have you called that school yet? When are you calling that school?" he kept asking McDonald when they got back to the Tiwis. She had, but it was complicated; Tipungwuti was effectively his own guardian, looking out for himself, but his Tiwi family still needed to entrust him to Jane, so that he could be enrolled. "I kept bugging her about it all the time," he said, "because the opportunity was there, and I didn't want to let it slip."

He still couldn't speak much English, when he started there. "That was … interesting!" he said, but he never felt out of place or like the other kids looked at him wondering what he was doing there. Sport – football, netball, whatever else was going – helped him settle in and it didn't take long for the Gippsland Power to recruit him into their team: he was smart, skilful and could do some special things. "At first it was hard just to communicate. I was shy, and I was thinking 'what are all the kids talking about,' " he said. "But sport helped me put my personality out there, to be more of myself."

McDonald-Tipungwuti has become a fan favourite.Credit: Getty Images

Tipungwuti loved football, and had always been good at it: he played his first game for the Tiwi Bombers before he turned 15. There were things he needed to work on if he wanted to go further with it and people kept telling him what they were. He needed to lose some weight, to work on his fitness and run harder for longer, but it was hard. He went into year nine at Chairo College, but was really still at primary school level and had so much catching up to do.

In a way things got easier when he was diagnosed with a learning disability shortly after starting: he had help, he found new ways to do things, and he thrived. Within two years he had made it to year 11 level, done a sport and recreation course and started working as a teacher's aide. But it held him back in other ways; where some kids would head straight to training after school, he had hours of extra work to get through first.

"For three or four hours every day he'd sit there getting through his school work," said Jane. "It was mentally exhausting. I'm not sure many people knew how hard he was working."

Tipungwuti was disappointed when he missed out being drafted at the end of 2012. It had been hard not to get his hopes up. He felt like some clubs presumed he would end up back on Melville Island; that never crossed his mind. He knew others thought he didn't work hard enough, that he might not want it badly enough, but he knew they were wrong on that, too.

He started working for the local council in Morwell, getting up at five o'clock every morning to drive to work as a gardener. He started summer training with the Casey Scorpions, getting home after nine, eating his dinner, going to bed and then doing it all again.

He had no idea what it might lead to, but one day an Essendon recruiter came to see him at home. Merv Keane threw some ground balls at him in the front yard, testing out a niggling back problem that took a long while to get right, and spoke to him. The Bombers had seen all the things he could do, but the big question was whether he could get himself fit enough to do them at the highest, hardest level. It didn't seem like a bad idea to go and play for their VFL team. "It made me think, maybe they're really interested," said Tipungwuti. "It made me feel like they would keep watching me."

So much has happened since then. With McDonald, Tipungwuti moved from the country to the city, into a place in Glenroy. He started working in Essendon's community department doing school visits, even joining the staff's indoor soccer team, and drove back to his old school one day every week to do his course and some more work as an integration aide.

Hayden Skipworth was coaching the club's VFL side back then, and would watch him head off to do extra running sessions and turn up the day after games for a swim. He could see his desire; it was there every day. He knew from the start his best spot was in the back line, but would play him in other positions to make sure he could keep him in the team as AFL players were dropped back, and so that he could expose him to new things. He also helped him improve in other ways, given all the new information he needed to take in and absorb.

At times that was hard. "That was an issue initially," Skipworth said, "but he spoke to us about his background and the difficulties he'd had. Jane spoke to us as well and, to be honest, he's improved that side of things as much if not more than he's improved his fitness. He did a lot of extra reading, a lot of extra studying, and we tried to keep things as simple as possible for him and made sure we didn't over-complicate the program too much. His ability to learn and understand – to ask questions and speak up and create discussion – has improved so much."

It wasn't enough to get drafted, though. Not at the end of 2013, when Tipungwuti wondered whether he should keep going. "I thought for a while I should stop," he said. "I wanted to stop. To miss out at that moment, it was hard for me to take in." It was tougher again the next year because he had worked for it even harder, asking Jane late in the season if she would train him, coach him, push him and help him achieve his dream.

"I'll do it," she told him, "but you need to see me as your coach, not your mum."

They did some tough running sessions; 200-metre sprints, 500-metre sprints, again and again. They got more advice on his diet. They went to the local park, they drove to Williamstown, they even went down to Essendon's training base, where coaches and recruiting staff could literally look out their windows and watch him running around.

"It was what he had to do and it was hard for him, because he hadn't had a mum for most of his life and all of a sudden he's got this mum and she's saying 'don't call me mum when I'm coaching you,' " said Jane. "We'd have arguments about it, because I'd have to say I can't be your mum right now, if I'm going to help you get to where you want to go then I need to be your coach. But we'd go out there every day, and he worked hard. He was tough. He really wanted it."

He also had other things going on around him, some big decisions to make and some parts of his life to find out more about. Tipungwuti became Anthony Watson McDonald-Tipungwuti a little over two years ago. It was the obvious thing do because Jane had become his mother and because ever since he had met them, Michael, Mitchell, Kellianne and Nikki had seemed like siblings. "It was very important to me because I already felt like part of the family. They were my family," he said. "I wanted it because of my mum and because of my brothers and sisters and because of my Grandma Mac and Grandma Watson. It meant a lot to me, to make that decision in my life."

It also created some challenges. "It was hard for the people back home, for the Tiwi families up there. They were saying 'why is he changing his name?' and it was hard for me to explain why I wanted that and hard for them to accept," said McDonald-Tipungwuti, whose heritage is hugely important to him, and to his adoptive family. He is proud to be from the Tiwis, he uses his childhood nickname 'Walla,' he wants his story to give hope to kids up there and is finding out more about his own life story all the time.

Growing up, he could never be entirely sure that his father was his father. He had passed away when Anthony was just a few months old. But he has begun to research and read up on him, finding out that he was a talented, well-known artist who left home as a teenager to go to Sydney and start a career of his own.

"That was a problem for me growing up, because Dad died early and I didn't grow up learning about him and who he was," said McDonald-Tipungwuti. "That sort of gave me doubt in my mind that he really was my dad, but we've found some things and that's what I want to do, look for more things and find out what what he did and who he was. It's very important to me. We found a picture of him hanging his painting up on the wall and the first thing my sister Nikki said was, 'is that Anthony?' He did what I did, he travelled away from home for his dream, and everyone now keeps saying to me, 'you look just the same as your dad.' "

There is still so much more to find out, but learning more about his background and understanding more about who he is has given him the confidence to make more decisions, some of them very hard ones. When he made the Essendon team early in 2015, as a temporary pre-season top-up player, McDonald-Tipungwuti wanted everyone back home to know what he had achieved. The same thing happened later in the year, when he was picked to play for the Bombers' VFL team in their version of the Dreamtime game. But his calls went unanswered, his messages unreturned for days.

It made him feel anxious and stressed. It made him have bad dreams and it made him realise that he needed to focus on what he wanted to do and stop letting things get him down. "I was pretty excited for me and I guess I hoped they would be too, but I didn't have that chance to let them know. It was making me have nightmares and I had to make that decision whether I was going to keep calling them or, I guess, separate them from my life," he said. "The pressure was always there, the disappointment. For my footy, I had to not worry any more."

He found comfort in another decision made at around the same time, to become a Christian. "Everything changed when I accepted God into my life," he said. "I went to the church down the road last year and the pastor had a talk and it was the right time for me to go to that path like my brothers and sisters, and change my life. It gives me a lot of strength and courage to know that He's there, to help me and guide me through."

He wears a small cross under his wrist tape, every game. "It was hard growing up, trying to find something like that. When my grandma died everything changed and fell apart and I was going to become someone that I wasn't. That's what I always knew, that I wanted the right life and to create something new and good."

There was one last, little step to take. McDonald-Tipungwuti was fitter, by the end of last season. He had more muscles. He was still quick, he was still a brilliant kick and he still did things that made the people watching him think "wow". But to convince the recruiting team to pick him up as a rookie he had to tick off one last thing: run two kilometres in less than six minutes and 40 seconds.

He got there - 6:39 - and when his phone rang during a school visit two days before the draft he looked down and saw Adrian Dodoro's name come up. "It's pretty important I ring this guy back,'' he told the teacher, and when he made it to the list manager's office later that day he saw a video camera sitting in a corner of the room, ready to record his reaction to what he was about to be told. "It's finally happening," he thought, and it was, it really was. "It was good," he said. "I thought, I guess have my chance now."

It still feels that way. Like the start. Like a brand new chapter. McDonald-Tipungwuti has played in every game so far this season. He has brought some joy to his team at a difficult time, and to the people who go and watch them play every weekend.

He has had help, from so many people. He wouldn't have done it without his mum. He isn't sure what he would be doing if he hadn't turned around that day and wondered whether there was something more out there. Whether he'd be living on the streets; whether he'd still even be alive. He's come a long, long, way but is still just getting started. "I guess it's the start of a whole new journey," he said. "I've had a few of them so far. But I hope this is the longest one and I hope it's the best one."