Inside story: How Coburg helped Luke Ryan, Adam Saad go from undrafted to All-Australian
There are three VFL players who have graduated to the AFL and become All-Australian in the past decade — two came from the same club. TIM MICHELL has the inside story of how Coburg salvaged the AFL ambitions of Adam Saad and Luke Ryan.
AFL
Don't miss out on the headlines from AFL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Coburg was once a suburb renowned as a home for the working-class.
Today, with a median house price of $1.2m and significant gentrification, it has been transformed into one of the most affluent areas in Melbourne’s northwest.
Among the opulence sits Coburg City Oval, a humble ground that is a throwback to a bygone era of football.
In many ways, the oval typifies the Lions – one of the remaining stand-alone clubs in the revamped Victorian Football League.
They rely on pride, mateship and opportunity more than rival clubs who boast much greater wealth.
Yet against the odds, Coburg has produced two of the AFL’s best VFL draftees of the past decade – Luke Ryan and Adam Saad.
Ryan and Saad arrived at the club from very different backgrounds.
Saad grew up in nearby Brunswick, playing junior football at West Coburg where many of his teammates were also of Lebanese descent.
Ryan was a larrikin from Moonee Valley who, despite prodigious talent, could not shake doubts over his professionalism.
“You wouldn’t have picked him to be an AFL footballer back then. Luke loved a beer. He loved a bit of a chat,” Ryan’s former Moonee Valley coach Charlie Denaro said.
“Really happy-go-lucky kid. He was just a great character. I won’t say he didn’t take his footy seriously, but he just loved being one of the boys.”
The now Fremantle defender joined Coburg in 2016, having gone undrafted after featuring for Calder Cannons in the TAC Cup and playing in a senior premiership as a junior in the Essendon District league.
Ryan, an All-Australian in 2020 and Doig medallist, had only weeks earlier been told he was surplus to requirements after spending pre-season trialling with Essendon’s VFL program.
The Lions offered him a VFL lifeline, which despite initial hesitation, he accepted the day before a practice match against Carlton’s former affiliate Northern Blues.
“He ended up giving me a call about 24 hours before that game,” former Coburg assistant coach and recruiting boss Seb Spagnuolo said.
“When he came along he obviously saw a lot of familiar faces from his Cannons days, he played really well, and at the end of that game (coach) Peter German said, ‘we want to sign that kid straight away’.”
Former Lions general manager Craig Lees recalls: “You know when you’re looking at a player that has just got elite attributes. He saw the game way, way quicker than everyone else. There was a couple of switches of play, changes of direction. (German) and I were just watching the developing league going, ‘he’s going to play senior footy in the next couple of weeks’.”
Just weeks after he seemed destined to shelve any AFL ambitions and play with friends at Maribyrnong Park, Ryan was best-on-ground in his VFL senior debut for Coburg against Box Hill.
“Everything he is doing at AFL level now is exactly what he did in that game,” Lees said.
“He dropped off, let his man go back to the stoppage, pulled out of the contest at the right time, set us up from halfback, switched the play, 30-odd possessions in that game and 10 intercept marks. Won the (Anzac) medal and the rest is history.”
Ryan was working as a part-time tradie when he played his 10th and final game for Coburg that season, suffering a shoulder injury that would bring an end to his debut VFL campaign.
AFL clubs had seen enough.
The phones kept running hot at Coburg from recruiters wanting to know more about the kid being touted as one of the best state league draft prospects in history.
“They would always ask that question — ‘I heard he’s a bit of a lad’,” Lees said. “I’d be like, ‘he might have been’, ‘he might like his mates’ and ‘he might like a beer’. And I would say, ‘that’s great because players need to have balance’.
“But inside our environment, his thirst for knowledge and his ability to work hard and want to get better everyday that he was at Coburg, I couldn’t attest for him any more.
“Now he’s made a career out of it by doing that.
“Luke has continually gotten better in the environment, but he was always going to do that because he was a learner. He did want to listen. He did want to get better.”
Ryan went into the 2016 draft rated a potential top-20 pick.
Yet hours into the event, his name had not been called. Then at pick 66 — and 12 selections before the draft wrapped up — the Dockers pounced.
“The Fremantle footy club have really embraced him for who he is and really supported him. Well done to them because they took a punt (when) it looked like most clubs were going to go a bit gun shy on (him),” Spagnuolo said.
Ryan has since become one of the AFL’s premier intercept defenders, averaging 23 disposals, seven marks and eight rebound-50s per game this year.
“The narrative in the community was like, ‘he’s a bit of a lad and a player’,” Lees said.
“But you know what, he was a good trainer. He worked hard when he was in the environment.
“He was delisted by the VFL at this stage at Essendon and didn’t make the final cut. I remember having the conversation with Seb, it was like, ‘we’ve just got to get him in because we know he can seriously play’.”
Denaro said: “He played the same as how he plays now. He’d back into packs and was never afraid to do the hard yards. He was just cheeky.”
-------------------------------------------
Phil Cleary remembers AFL draft night at the Saad household in Brunswick well.
It was 2014 and as the national draft went later into the night, disbelief grew.
Why hadn’t Adam’s name been called?
“His sisters loved the football,” Cleary, who coached Saad in West Coburg’s under-16 team, said.
“His sister Aicha was really serious about football. I remember one time she said to me she was so upset when he wasn’t drafted. She said to me, words to the effect of, ‘it’s disgraceful. He’s good enough to play AFL football. I can’t believe they haven’t drafted him’.”
Saad joined Coburg as a tricky small forward who Cleary thought had the talent to match the feats of Eddie Betts at the elite level.
But it quickly became clear to German and Lees that if Saad was going to be drafted, it was as a rebounding defender.
“Germo took one look at him in the pre-season and was like, ‘mate, no chance you are playing forward — you are the best kick in this club’,” Lees said.
“We had Saady the year before Luke came on the scene to set us up off halfback. That ability like we have seen now in the AFL to take the game on, run, carry, deliver.
“One thing that is absolutely a strength of his, which was criticised heavily in the media, was his ability to defend. But I always knew he had that in him because he was a competitor.”
Cleary, a Coburg legend who was then boundary rider on the ABC’s VFL coverage, never missed an opportunity to spruik Saad’s case for higher honours.
“It’s so uplifting to have players — especially when they have been ignored the first time around — to then get another chance,” he said.
“That’s what made Adam’s progress profound and uplifting. The fact he had been denied an opportunity. He had been dismissed by the recruiters.
“I remember being in his house, talking to him when he was crestfallen. And his sister saying ‘he’s too good, why don’t they recruit him’?”
Cleary could not be prouder of the resilience Saad has shown to become one of the AFL’s most damaging backmen.
“West Coburg play on one of the worst patches of dirt in Melbourne,” he said.
“There’s a boy who has played on a rough patch of dirt at Shore Reserve and he has gone from there to being a superstar.”
On the day Saad was selected by Gold Coast with pick 25 in the rookie draft, Cleary was one of the first to call then-Suns coach Rodney Eade.
“I said, ‘Rocket, you have picked a very, very good player’. I said, ‘trust me, he’ll be a star’,” Cleary said.
Ryan, Saad and Geelong star Tom Stewart are the only All-Australians to graduate from the VFL since Saad was taken in 2014.
----------
Craig Lees was the cuddler. Peter German the hard-nosed disciplinarian.
They might not have had the resources other state league clubs could draw on, but what Coburg lacked in finances, Lees and German made up for in experience.
They were the ultimate good cop, bad cop act and central to helping Saad and Ryan understand that they were AFL players in the making.
“Germo was the coach they both needed,” Lees said.
“I say this to a lot of people — when we’re talking about Peter German’s coaching — he’ll either make you as an AFL player or break you. And if he makes you, you will go on and have a successful career.”
Spagnuolo, now helping guide the next crop of AFL talent from Melbourne’s northwest as talent lead at Calder Cannons, said the development of Ryan and Saad from footy’s scrap heap to All-Australians emphasised the value of stand-alone state league clubs.
“Over the last few years there’s been more players coming out of the talent league that will choose an aligned environment or an AFL reserves type environment,” Spagnuolo said.
“I will always look at the ones that go to a stand-alone club and think, ‘that’s a very courageous move when it’s much easier to probably go to an AFL-aligned environment’.
“That’s the first step; the courage it takes to have a go in a stand-alone environment.
“Once you get your opportunity it’s just really taking feedback and doing everything you can.”
Originally published as Inside story: How Coburg helped Luke Ryan, Adam Saad go from undrafted to All-Australian
Scott Pendlebury through the eyes of his three coaches
Scott Pendlebury’s career changed in 2006. Now, the ‘conductor of the orchestra’ is Collingwood’s greatest ever player. GLENN McFARLANE speaks to Pendlebury’s coaches about the 400-gamer.
Star’s frustrations eased by Lions youth
A Brisbane star admits his own form has been under par this season but he’s seeing great strides taken by fellow forwards.