Selwood and Sauce: How close Olympian Kyle Chalmers came to signing with AFL club Geelong

Olympic great Kyle Chalmers always held a dream of playing AFL and when a powerhouse club came calling, he was ready to swap the pool for the MCG. But a veteran ruck stood in his way.

Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers has revisited how close he came to swapping the pool for the AFL with three-club ruck Sam Jacobs the key man in talking the swimmer out of a blockbuster move to Geelong.

The triple-Olympian has always loved footy, given his father Brett played 50 games at the top level for Adelaide and a further 25 game for Port Adelaide, and began drifting back towards the game in 2021.

Troy Selwood, then working as a recruiter for Geelong, reached out to Chalmers about the prospect of putting the swimmer on the club’s Category B rookie list and the pair shared a meeting.

Kyle Chalmers almost exited the pool for the footy field. Picture: Adam Head

As he battled a shoulder injury in the lead in to the Tokyo games, Chalmers was seriously considering dropping Speedos for Sherrins before he caught up with Jacobs, who played 208 games for Carlton, Adelaide and GWS.

“A mate of mine … Scotty Darlow spoke to me and he said ‘Troy Selwood wants to talk to you about going to Geelong’. And I was like ‘This has to be a joke’,” Chalmers told the Howie Games podcast.

“But I’ll sit down and whatever I will do the Zoom call with Troy Selwood. And I got on Zoom and did this two hour recruitment thing about going to Geelong as a Category B rookie and if I was going to do that it would have to be after the Olympics in 2021, otherwise I would be too old.

“And I got very excited about that because I didn’t know how my shoulder was going to recover firstly from surgery.

“Then I remember pretty much getting off that Zoom call and going to have a kick of footy with my great mate Sam Jacobs.

Sam Jacobs talked Chalmers out of the move. Picture: Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

“And ‘Sauce’ (Jacobs) really put it at me and said ‘Well do you really want to go from being No.1 or No.2 in the world in your sport to being probably 45th on an AFL list and never playing a game?’.

“I went, ‘Yeah that is actually a good point you’re right’. That is when the dream, the bubble just burst and I thought, I really love swimming.”

Selwood, who now works at prestigious school Geelong Grammar, responded to the memory on Friday on X.

“I think he made the right decision, but it was worth a try,” he wrote.

I think he made the right decision, but it was worth a try! 🤷🏼‍♂️😊 https://t.co/dx7X90Ykjl

— Troy Selwood (@TroySelwood) November 1, 2024

Standing at 194cm, Chalmers could have made for a utility for the Cats, who had phenomenal success pulling budding Olympic runner Mark Blicavs into football.

Chalmers revealed that leading into Jacobs’ stern advice, he still held a dream of playing AFL, even after winning gold at the 2016 games in Rio.

The sprint swimmer went on to win individual silver at both the Tokyo and Paris games.

“As a kid I obviously wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps and play AFL,” he said.

Originally published as Selwood and Sauce: How close Olympian Kyle Chalmers came to signing with AFL club Geelong