Why Suns prodigy Matt Rowell is the most interesting athlete in Australia
Matt Rowell is the child prodigy told at 10 he was destined for the AFL. Now he’s here … and he’s even better than we thought.
Matt Rowell is the most interesting bloke in Australian sport right now. There’s magic in a child prodigy being told from the age of 10 that he’s so bloody good and so bloody talented and so bloody gifted that he’s destined for the big time … and then slaying it from day one, like Shane Gould and Ginger Meggs have been rolled into one irrepressible character that has taken a shine to footy.
This is fairytale stuff. For now. Let us touch wood, let us cross our fingers for the young fella. Because sport has injuries and form slumps and complexities that cannot be foretold.
But the facts are these. Rowell has turned 19 this week. He has played four AFL games. Just the four. And yet he has been so spectacularly entertaining and eye-catching that even non-AFL folk like me have sat up and thought crikey, who’s the redhead?
He takes on Geelong’s 350-game legend Gary Ablett, and their 300-game legend and captain Joel Selwood, on Saturday, and somehow he is the most interesting bloke on the park. The Suns versus the Cats, the wonderkid versus the old warriors — it’s the most interesting fixture in Australian sport this weekend.
The Suns have come third-last, fourth-last, second-last, second-last and last in the past five seasons. They’ve won 23 games and lost 87 in that time.
You couldn’t get me to watch a Suns game if you promised a post-game surf at an empty Snapper Rocks and free meat raffle tickets at the Coolangatta Hotel. But I’ve been intrigued enough by Rowell to look up video highlights and photographs and stories from his local newspapers when he was a young ranga on the rise.
I’ve seen photographs in which he’s staring at the ball with the intensity of an Olympic breaststroker trying to get his fingertips to the wall. The goals and fist-pumps come from someone who doesn’t seem especially shocked to be so successful so quickly. He plays with soul. Muscle. Teen spirit. Self-belief. It’s good stuff.
The flaming red hair makes you wonder if he’s in fact real, or if he’s been dreamt up by the AFL’s marketing department as the very personification of who the Suns want to be.
He’s their main man, he’s their mascot. He may win the Brownlow while, in footballing terms, he’s still a boy. Interesting.
Fearless young blokes like this make you think there’s something a bit special going on. How to describe it? You can’t. But you know it when you see it.
Gould as a 15-year-old at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Ian Thorpe as a 17-year-old at the Sydney Games. Don Bradman as 19-year-old on Test debut. Sachin Tendulkar as a 16-year-old in his first India cap. Lleyton Hewitt beating Andre Agassi and winning his first ATP Tour event as a 16-year-old. Ricky Ponting playing for Australia at 20. Ellie Carpenter at 15 for the Matildas.
Rowell has gone to the Suns as an 18-year-old because he’s been the most promising junior and they’ve been the worst club. Now they’re second. Interesting.
It is textbook prodigy stuff. Starting in Auskick on freezing Melbourne mornings at Mont Albert. Other kids crying and yelping because of the cold. Rowell blowing in his hands and having a spring in his step and telling his father David: “That was fun!”
The kid always having a ball in his hand. Photos with mum and dad for the local rag in front of the kitchen bench at home. His five-straight Yarra Junior Football League best and fairest prizes.
Stories about him being a good young bloke with his head screwed on right. Never a need to tell him to pull it in. Interesting.
My favourite story about him is the one about him getting up at the crack of dawn as a very young junior player. Before the sun has properly emerged, he’s put on his Canterbury Cobras jersey and inserted his mouthguard, declaring himself ready to go.
You cannot beat that sort of in-built enthusiasm and affection for your craft. It lasts a lifetime. It means that even your bad days aren’t really bad days. You’re still involved.
When a local newspaper reporter has gone to his home ahead of last year’s draft, Rowell has been found watching Fox Footy — in particular, a replay of the 2014 preliminary final between Hawthorn and Port Adelaide. Which brings to mind a favourite story from Stephanie Gilmore. As a young girl, she watched the world surfing tour near her Tweed Heads home and told herself: “I can do that.” She, too, has slayed it from day one.
Cats versus Suns. Here’s to the draft! Rowell has hardly grown up on the streets of Coolangatta, worshipping Occy and Parko and Mick, Gold Coast through and through. It may not have been Rowell’s club of choice; it may not have been his 18th choice, given the choice. But the draft has worked a treat in this instance.
Rowell has become so inexorably interesting that the Suns have become interesting. Now we get Selwood and Ablett versus Rowell; they may like to exchange handshakes and a baton.
Selwood has tweeted about looking forward to watching Rowell play for the next 15 years. He’s called him a young bull. He’s sent him praise-filled text messages. Hardened warriors such as Selwood aren’t inclined to rap a young bloke until he’s earned his dues. Which normally takes longer than four games.
“Pinching myself a bit,” Rowell says of hearing from Selwood. “I’ve looked up to people like that since I can remember, so just to even be texting them is something I can’t really get over.”
I remember the young Thorpe saying he’s most content when he’s swimming. The water has been where he found his purpose. The water is where he has felt his real self.
Rowell’s mother, Louise, has given perhaps the most telling quote of all.
“Everything makes sense to Matt when he is on a footy field,” she says. Interesting.
He may be doing what he has been born to do. Touch wood.
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