Former West Coast premiership player Will Schofield creates fistball team to compete in national champs in Geelong

A former AFL player is back in his hometown of Geelong to compete on the national stage. And what started as a podcast gag has turned into something more serious.

The Western Fisters are competing at the national fistball championships. Picture: Supplied

You may not have heard of fistball before.

But a Geelong boy and ex-AFL player is putting the European sport — that has similarities to handball and volleyball — on the map … in Western Australia at least.

Former West Coast premiership defender Will Schofield is putting his golden fists back in action on the field as the driving force behind WA’s inaugural entry into the national fistball championships, taking place in his hometown of Geelong on Saturday.

What started as a joke on the media indentity’s podcast, Back Chat, has become a serious pursuit. Well, besides the constant double entendres and innuendo.

Will Schofield is back in the sporting arena. Picture: Mark Stewart

“It’s gone from a bit of laughter to quite serious, try to win the national champs on Saturday now and we’re here to win it,” Schofield said.

“After 15 years of AFL I am questioning my life as a professional athlete since fistball has come into my life.

“I do think that I would have been fisting at a higher level.

“It’s bloody fun to play. I’ve enjoyed learning the new sport but there is plenty of crossover between AFL and fistball, especially for dour operators like myself with the tomahawk-like spoil that I used on many times on the footy field coming into good use on the fistball court.

“Basically this sport is just engulfed in innuendo.

The ‘Western Fisters’ held the first WA fistball invitation to pick their talented squad, with 100 athletes put through a variety of tests.

They included a 20m sprint, longest fist, fastest fist, and fist folds – a variation of the famous skinfolds test.

With the help of former premiership Eagle Sam Butler, their chief selector, the team picked their squad of 10 to head to Geelong, with the team training twice a week for the past month.

Unfortunately, ex-Swan and Eagles star Lewis Jetta and Hamish Brayshaw, a former Eagle who is the brother of Melbourne’s Angus and Fremantle’s Andrew, pulled out with injury in the lead-up.

But the Fisters are gunning for a win on the national stage – and Schofield is sure to have the home crowd behind him.

“It was a massive coincidence that it was (in Geelong),” Schofield said.

“That is the questionable element of it, I am captain of the Western Fisters when I am very much Victorian and very much a Geelong boy.

“Playing for the Western Fisters on my home deck, maybe I have a slight advantage.

“I’m the captain, I’m the head fister. We had Lewis Jetta, two-time premiership player, he was ready to go but he pulled out last week.”

Fans will be able to tune in via a live stream, with a commentator back in Perth calling every game.

Originally published as Former West Coast premiership player Will Schofield creates fistball team to compete in national champs in Geelong