At the MCG on Saturday, it is certain Brisbane beacon Harris Andrews and Sydney superstar Isaac Heeney will cross paths in what could prove a pivotal grand final contest.
The brilliant footballers have differing skills, yet both are extremely creative in their roles and shape as critical cogs for their sides.
The Swan plays with athleticism and ruggedness in equal parts, with his sublime skills balancing perfectly with his risk of body and chin, combining to create a match-winning force.
The Lions defender is taller and leaner, built more like a basketballer than a ball of muscle, but blessed with a marking ability that has made him one of the AFL’s finest defenders.
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Born just over seven months apart in 1996, both men are dual-all Australians who have played more than 200 games and present as superb role models and leaders of the sport.
More importantly, they are also symbols of the importance of opportunity, for without the football academies helping Australian rules football flourish north of the ‘Barassi line’, neither would be featuring on Saturday.
Ahead of his 200th game last week Heeney, who was dubbed “little Tarzan” by a junior coach at the Cardiff Hawks in a profile in The Age, said he could have been lost to footy as a teenager if not for the Swans investing in a branch of their academy in Newcastle.
“Newcastle was full of NRL, so I loved rugby league growing up. (I) played it at school (and) I guess I wanted to do that up until probably the age of 14 or 15,” he said.
“It wasn’t until I was in the Sydney Academy that I could see a clear pathway there and I loved it and thought I’d decide to have a crack at AFL.”
Heeney told Nine’s Footy Classified on Wednesday night “if it wasn’t for that (the Academy), I’d probably be playing NRL”.
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Andrews was a late-bloomer who was mixing study, fun, footy and part-time work when he was issued with an invitation to join Brisbane’s academy as a teenager with plenty of rough edges to his craft that needed refining.
“I was playing at Aspley as a forward as a very skinny 17-year-old and working at Domino’s and eating a lot of crap food,” he told this reporter.
“But I guess by being able to get myself into the academy … and learning a little bit more about what it takes to be a professional athlete, it was eye opening.
“I was juggling school exams and all the pressures that come with that, my friends and all that sort of stuff. But it gave me a little bit more insight and it just gave me more motivation to go, ‘Shit, I’d really love to do this’.”
HOME GROWN HEROES
Had Sydney’s Callum Mills convinced John Longmire of his fitness, almost a quarter of the Swans side in Saturday’s grand final would have been developed by its academy.
All Australians Nick Blakey and Errol Gulden, along with Braeden Campbell, are among talents who flourished at a footy school which began in 2010.
Brisbane, too, has nurtured talents including Eric Hipwood, Jack Payne and Jaspa Fletcher, a father-son recruit who, along with Will Ashcroft, has spent time working with development coaches at the club’s academy.
The representation is impressive but, as Brisbane chairman Andrew Wellington told foxsports.com.au, it pales in comparison to the make-up of the reigning Lions AFLW premiership team of last season.
Of their 21 premiership players in 2023, more than three-quarters began playing Aussie rules in Queensland, though not every player was affiliated with the Lions academy.
“Some of them pre-dated the academy, but to have a non-traditional state winning a premiership where 16 of the 21 players started their football life in that state, I thought it was an incredible stat,” Wellington said.
Brisbane has strengthened its investment in its academy since receiving advice from its triple-premiership coach Leigh Matthews, who will present the premiership cup to the Lions should they break a flag drought dating back to 2003.
The AFL legend warned that in order to minimise the impact associated with a talent drain — the Lions lost recruits Elliot Yeo, Sam Docherty and James Aish midway through last decade — it should aspire to ensure at least a quarter of its list was from Queensland.
“The academy itself was not a silver bullet, but it was a really important part,” Wellington said.
“It was really important that we did create that sort of pool of players who could come through and play at AFL level, which fortunately we have been able to do.”
Sydney chairman Andrew Pridham is also delighted by the homegrown representation in the Swans side for Saturday.
“If you look back, it was actually Paul Roos’ idea to set up the academy and it has been a major investment,” he said.
“It’s been very significant (and) on Saturday, I think we’ll have the highest number of New South Wales-born players in our history (in grand finals).”
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ELITE TALENT DRAWS GREEN-EYED RESPONSE FROM RIVAL CLUBS
That is not to say the northern academies have not drawn criticism at different stages since their inception, along with spirited rebuttals from the clubs running them.
Envy is at the heart of the criticism, which is not surprising given the talent of those who will feature in Saturday’s grand final.
The green-eyed monster reared its head again last November when the Suns plucked behemoth forward Jed Walter with pick 3 and fellow first-round draftees Ethan Read (9), Jake Rogers (15) and Will Graham (26) from the Gold Coast Academy.
Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick made the point that “those four kids might not be in the AFL system without the Academy” and was backed in his defence at the time by the Lions’ chairman on social media.
At different stages over the past decade, Wellington has been concerned about moves to “water down” the ability of northern clubs to have premium access to the players who are developed in their academies.
In response to the criticism from rivals last year, the AFL has altered rules for clubs associated with youth developed in Next Generation Academies to provide more protection when it comes to selecting elite talent, something Wellington agrees with.
“Obviously, after the Gold Coast draft haul last year, there was a little bit of angst around academies, and obviously there’s two northern sides in the grand final this year, so that might invite some criticism from some in terms of the academies,” Wellington said.
“But I don’t think there’s any sort of northern state dominance of the game emerging because of the academies, so I think it would be terrible to water down the rules around the academies, (because) they’re having so much success and impact in growing the game here. So why would you water that down?
“I’m very comfortable with the change that the AFL has made for clubs in other states to have first round access to NGA players, because I think that’s fair as well, because we want to grow the game in a culturally-diverse demographic.
“So if we can put some responsibility on clubs to contribute to that, and if they have access to those players as a result of that, then I think that’s a good thing. It is no different to what we are asking for up here, so it would be disingenuous of me to say that was not fair.”
Heeney touched on the tension that exists in an interview on Footy Classified on Wednesday night with a panel including former Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, who was once a stringent critic of the former cost of allowance living extended to Sydney.
“I did love every sport growing up and, as much as Eddie is probably not going to like this, it was for the academy that I actually pursued AFL,” he said on Nine.
“Apologies, but if it was not for that, I think I would be playing NRL. No-one in my family played AFL. My old man loved (NRL) and it was because of the academy and, even in the first couple of years in the academy, I loved NRL more.
“But at the age of 14,15, when Chris Smith at the academy said you have to choose a sport and I said, ‘You know what, I see a clear pathway here and I feel like I am doing well at it, so I thought I would give it a crack’”.
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THE BIGGER PICTURE OUTSIDE THE MCG
Both Sydney and Brisbane stress there is a bigger picture associated with their footy schools in growing footy in New South Wales and Queensland, a state that helped save the competition during the Covid-riddled 2020 season.
The vast majority of academy pupils will never play an AFL or AFLW game, but many do return to play at state level and in other suburban and country competitions around their home states.
Their exposure to high-end coaching as teenagers helps to raise their own skill levels, which in turn raises the standards of the clubs and competitions they are returning to, both chairmen said.
“Something we are working through is making sure we have the right KPIs to measure performance, because we think certainly that the players who get drafted by ourselves and other clubs is one obvious KPI, but there are a whole lot of other KPIs as well,” Wellington said.
“We have seen really strong participation growth in Queensland and our academy, we think, has played a part in that, along with other factors as well. But there is no question that having an academy and providing a pathway, as do the Suns, is playing a role in the participation growth we are seeing.”
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Pridham pointed to the record membership and crowds at the SCG this season as evidence of the strength of the AFL in the New South Wales capital and he says the Swans Academy has had an impact on those numbers.
The AFL have a metric that shows participants are six times more likely to attend league games than those without an active connection to footy.
Pridham, who has been associated with the Swans for 22 years and the chairman since 2013, said the club has invested more than $15 million in its academy and its presence has helped strengthen the support of Sydney.
“It’s very significant because one of the things that connects us to the fans — and I’m a big believer in this — is that it has really grown the fanaticism of our fan base and the relevance the team has to the community. I see it every day,” Pridham said.
“You’ve got all these kids in the academy system and they’ve all become fanatics, not just about the Swans, but about the game. And you’ve got their parents, their schoolmates, their teammates from the local club as well.
“They get connected and they come to the games and we saw that this year at the SCG, with a record number of people through the turnstiles to watch our games. We had 500,000 people this year, averaging 39,000 (a game) and we now have 75,000 members.
“A lot of the growth has just come from that connection to people. And having players like Mills, Heeney, Gulden, Blakey, Campbell, and the same with our women’s program, they become role models and it shows there is a pathway that’s attainable for kids.
“(The academy kids) wear the red and white of the Swans and you see kids all through Sydney walking around, little girls and boys, and they probably sleep in their academy gear, because they are so proud of it, and that’s just a fantastic thing. So it has been fantastic to grow the game.”
ACADEMY GRADUATES IN AFL GRAND FINAL
Brisbane Lions
Eric Hipwood
Harris Andrews
Jack Payne
Jaspa Fletcher
Also on list: Shadeau Brain, Keidean Coleman, Bruce Reville
Sydney Swans
Nick Blakey
Braeden Campbell
Errol Gulden
Isaac Heeney
Also on list: Indhi Kirk, Callum Mills, Sam Wicks
Source Agencies
