By Marc McGowan
The Age is following prospective AFL draftees Nathaniel Sulzberger, Noah Mraz and Levi Ashcroft throughout the 2024 season for our Draft Dreams series as they bid to join the big time in November.
In March, we met the kid from Tassie, an ex-basketballer now chasing his football dream, and a blue-chip prospect with the genes to match.
AFL draft prospect Noah Mraz has an injury.Credit: Paul Jeffers
On Sunday, the national under-18 championships begin, a key carnival in the draft year, and plenty has happened since our first instalment.
There have been injury concerns, checks from AFL clubs and growing expectations as the trio continue the journey toward the AFL draft.
Noah Mraz
Almost all Noah Mraz’s plans for this year changed in a moment last month.
After privately battling pain all season and feeling restricted when he jumped, the Dandenong Stingrays rising star finally went for a scan after the AFL Academy’s clash with Coburg.
The news was not good: Mraz had sustained a stress fracture in his left navicular bone, an injury that will likely wipe out the rest of the 198-centimetre key defender’s draft year.
He has another scan in a fortnight that will determine whether he can ditch his crutches. There was at least some “peace of mind” for Mraz, given the injury proved he had not regressed athletically.
The Swans’ recruiting team visited him the day after the diagnosis, and he was “pretty flustered” and struggled to speak while coming to terms with the injury blow. However, both Sydney and the Giants assured Mraz he was still on track to be drafted. Talent scouts from North Melbourne and St Kilda have also spoken to him this year.
“I’m obviously devastated, but I need to focus on the things I can do, so I’m smashing gym every day, and trying to put on size,” Mraz said.
“It probably means I’m going to go lower [in the draft] than I was aiming for. I feel like that is inevitable because I won’t be playing – and in my head, I’m falling behind the other guys.
“I’m still hoping to get back at the very end of the season, and I’m doing everything I can to get back, but it more than likely isn’t going to happen.”
Ex-Essendon captain James Hird suffered a navicular stress fracture during his career.Credit: Allsport
Among the AFL players to suffer navicular stress fractures are James Hird, Jesse Hogan, Sam Darcy, Jordan Boyd, Matthew Egan, Shaun Higgins, Jack Trengove and Alex Fasolo. It was career-ending for Egan, but the others made it back after extended lay-offs.
Mraz believes his setback was due to overuse, a side effect of his dedication, particularly to plyometrics (jump training), which he did religiously to enhance what was already a strength with his athleticism.
Having graduated from year 12 last year and started university, he had more downtime. Mraz developed a daily checklist of activities to complete in order, from lifting weights at the gym to going for a run.
“If I didn’t do it, I would go to bed annoyed at myself – and I’d even struggle to sleep,” the Endeavour Hills-based teenager said.
“This was all on top of training, so it wasn’t smart, but because I finished school early, I had a lot of free time and wanted to do extras.
“I played [both] basketball and football for so long, and was training three times a day, pushing my body, so I thought I was immune to injury. I always have a mindset to not let anyone work harder than me.”
Mraz, who also missed the opening round of the Coates Talent League season with a concussion, has still attended Stingrays matches – sometimes sitting in the coaches’ box and helping his backline peers – and AFL Academy and Victoria Country camps.
“I feel like I can show how well I deal with this stuff, how resilient I am and how much I want it,” he said.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m not doing it for [the recruiters] – I’m doing it for myself, to prove it to myself. I’ll still do everything I can to improve.”
Nathaniel Sulzberger
Nathaniel Sulzberger has two main priorities in the next month.
Nathaniel Sulzberger relocated from Hobart to Melbourne last year to boost his AFL hopes.Credit: Joe Armao
The first is a strong showing for the Allies at the national under-18 championships – starting against South Australia in Adelaide on Sunday – to supercharge his AFL hopes, but the other is important to him, too.
“I want to get a ute,” Sulzberger said.
The Melbourne-based Tasmanian, an inside midfielder with seemingly endless endurance who is also playing for Caulfield Grammar and Sandringham Dragons, turned 18 on May 6 and already has his P-plates licence, but no car to call his own yet.
Sulzberger’s dad, Daniel, will arrive in Melbourne on the King’s Birthday weekend to join his son for the ute hunt.
He already welcomed a bunch of family from Hobart and the Gold Coast for a celebratory 18th birthday dinner, made even more special by a sharp performance that day for Caulfield Grammar against St Kevin’s College.
The defending champion Allies – comprising players from the ACT, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland and Tasmania – are due to play their third match on the Sunday of that holiday weekend, at Ikon Park against Vic Metro and their star-studded on-ball brigade, including Levi Ashcroft.
In between facing SA and Vic Metro, Sulzberger and the Allies will lock horns with Western Australia in Sydney next weekend as part of a front-ended championships schedule.
“It’s pretty massive [this time of year], but I’ll try to enjoy it, too, getting to play with all these boys at a higher level,” Sulzberger said.
AFL U18 National Championships fixture
May 26: SA v Allies, Thebarton Oval, 11am
June 2: Allies v WA, Blacktown ISP, noon.
June 9: Vic Metro v Allies, Ikon Park, 10.05am; Vic Country v SA, Ikon Park, 12.30pm.
June 16: SA v WA, Alberton Oval, 10.05am.
June 23: WA v Vic Metro, Optus Stadium, 10.45am.
June 29: WA v Vic Country, Revo Fitness Stadium, 10.30am.
June 30: SA v Vic Metro, Alberton Oval, 10.05am.
July 7: Allies v Vic Country, Brighton Homes Arena, 10.35am.
July 14: Vic Metro v Vic Country, Ikon Park, 10.35am.
- All times local
“I feel like my year’s gone well so far, but I want to have a big presence at these championships.
“I actually asked [Western Bulldog and fellow Tasmanian] Ryley Sanders at the start of the year about how he handled it. He was very highly rated before the champs, but the champs took him right up, so I asked him for some advice, and he was big on just keeping your normal routine and not thinking too much about it.”
As for Sulzberger, he said he generally was not too stressed going into games but expected to get “more worked up” closer to Sunday’s first bounce.
The championships promise to give him and recruiters a better gauge on where he sits in this year’s draft class.
Giants scouts Adrian Caruso and Emma Quayle, a former Age football journalist who wrote two books on the draft, were among the first to check in from an AFL perspective with the North Hobart product.
Sulzberger said something he was asked to work on more was his on-field leadership, which ex-Saint and Roo Nick Dal Santo helps Caulfield Grammar footballers with.
“It’s about sometimes not worrying about my own game, and focusing more on what the team needs,” he said. “It’s still important to worry about your own game, but sometimes shying away from that and doing more what the team needs [can be more valuable].”
Being part of a squad with players from various states and territories is even more complicated for Sulzberger because he relocated from Hobart to Melbourne in January last year.
The Allies, coached by ex-Bulldog Mitch Hahn, held a Zoom meeting with players on Monday, where they were asked to watch Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, a behind-the-scenes look at the January night in 1985 when music’s biggest stars gathered at short notice to record We Are the World.
Michael Jackson was one of the megastars who recorded We Are the World in 1985.Credit: Joe Armao
“There are similarities with us coming together as a group and trying to achieve something,” Sulzberger said.
“We need to make the most of it.”
Levi Ashcroft
Ryley Sanders and Levi Ashcroft were Sandringham’s most integral players as they won back-to-back Coates Talent League premierships last year.
Sanders joined the Western Bulldogs at year’s end as the No.6 pick, whereas Ashcroft had another 12 months to wait to be eligible. Last month, the close friends went head-to-head, when Ashcroft and the AFL Academy tested themselves against Footscray, the Bulldogs’ VFL affiliate.
Levi Ashcroft (centre) starred for the AFL Academy.Credit: AFL Photos
Ashcroft won the medal as the Academy’s best player that day with 29 disposals and six clearances, while Sanders was prolific for the Dogs – but there was a moment at a centre bounce that onlookers may have missed.
The son of triple premiership-winning ex-Lion Marcus identified Sanders was setting up as the sweeper off the back of the square, in part because he noticed mannerisms from when they were teammates.
“I came from the side of the contest and cut it off and got it perfectly and took the clearance,” Ashcroft said with a laugh. “I knew exactly what he was doing, and I told him afterwards and gave him a tap on the bum. He just laughed and said, ‘I knew you would’.”
That expert midfield craft is a major reason for the excitement about Ashcroft as an AFL prospect.
He might even be the best player in this year’s class, although Josh Smillie and Finn O’Sullivan could have something to say about that.
Ashcroft has not put a foot wrong this season, following up his outstanding bottom-age campaign – including being named an under-18 All-Australian – with a dominant start to 2024, whether playing for Sandringham, the AFL Academy or Brighton Grammar.
He has lived up to his ambition to kick more goals, but recruiters will also have noted how he is handling the extra on-field attention coming his way in school football.
Haileybury College successfully frustrated Ashcroft and curbed his influence, with three taggers rotating on and off him, in a massive win over Brighton last season in one of the teenager’s biggest lessons to date.
“I still got the footy, but my possessions were more inside, and I got distracted a bit too much. It was a tough day,” he said.
“I’ve been tagged in most of my school games this year, and I’ve talked a lot with my school footy coach [Simon McPhee] and other coaches here about what I can do better for the team when that’s happening. It might be me putting a block on instead of trying to get the ball all the time.
“I think that’s where I’ve grown this year; being able to do more for the team and not worrying so much about external things when I’m getting tagged.”
Ashcroft and Vic Metro must wait until June 9 to play their national under-18 championships opener, but he said they were intent on rectifying last year’s disappointing result.
The Brisbane Lions father-son prospect has some lofty goals himself, too, including matching Sanders’ effort last year to win the Larke Medal as the carnival’s best player.
“I’d love to win the Larke Medal, and it was one of my goals at the start of the year, but you’ve got to focus on the team first,” Ashcroft said.
“If you’re not thinking that way, then it takes away from your individual performance. Rob Harding, our coach at Sandringham and Metro, is always saying how winning the champs will enable more people to get drafted and recognised, so that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.