I was in and out of the Stingrays team during the early part of their TAC Cup campaign, although when I was out I just played in the Berwick under-16s. The TAC Cup was a fourteen-team competition back then—twelve of them Victoria-based, one in Tasmania and another representing both New South Wales and the ACT. Footy at that level was a lot quicker than I was used to, so it took me a while to adapt. But thankfully our coach, Rob Dean, was a very encouraging and kind bloke. He was one of those coaches who are addicted to the game. His match preparation was meticulous, including information sheets on our opposition (though I confess that I rarely read them), and he was constantly explaining the tactics and strategies that he wanted us to use. I have no doubt that I frustrated Rob at times, especially with my lackadaisical attitude towards training, but he did everything he could to keep my AFL career hopes alive. He urged me to think more about my body language on the field when things were not going well, and I tried my best to improve in that regard.
Thanks to Rob’s encouragement, I managed to put together some good performances for the Stingrays during May and June, and they helped earn me a place in the Vic Metro team that competed in the national under-16 championships in Darwin. I recall that the heat was oppressive and that a kid from Western Australia led his team to the title with a series of brilliant performances. That kid’s name was Des Headland, and I would get to know him much better the following year.
After the final game of the championships, the teams gathered for the presentation of the cup and the announcement of the All Australian team. I was delighted when my name was read out. It was proof that I was among the twenty-one best performers at the carnival. It should have been a highlight for Mum as well, who’d accompanied me to Darwin. Instead, she was deeply embarrassed when I stepped forward to receive my All Australian medal in bare feet and a ragged-looking T-shirt, sipping a can of Coke. All the other boys had accepted their medals wearing the official tracksuits and sneakers that had been supplied by the sponsors; they’d all been sipping sports drinks rather than a softie. I thought nothing of it. Who cares if you don’t like wearing a shitty tracksuit everywhere you go? But Mum was upset by my carefree attitude. She was certain it was going to turn off the many scouts in attendance. She actually cried when I received my medal—and it wasn’t from happiness.
After returning to the Stingrays, I was selected to play nearly every remaining weekend of the season. We had an awesome team. It was so good that three of our best players were taken in the first seven selections in that year’s AFL national draft. Gun midfielder Travis Johnstone, who had the best evasive skills our coach had ever seen, went to Melbourne with pick 1. Trent Croad, a key position player, was taken by Hawthorn with pick 3. And with pick 7, Carlton took Kris Massie, a tall and rangy type, the sort of all-round athlete the modern game was made for. Kris was also smart and committed to his schooling. He would often sit in the corner of the change rooms doing homework before training. You would never find me doing that. Among our other future AFL players were Andrew Williams, who spent time at West Coast and Collingwood, and Darren Hulme, who played 110 games for Carlton.
The Stingrays lost only two games in the 1997 home-and-away season, and those losses only happened because we’d lost so many of our players to the Vic Metro team competing in the national under-18 championships. We finished the regular season on top of the ladder and won our next two games to qualify for the grand final. Back then, the TAC Cup and reserves grand finals were still played at the MCG as the curtain-raiser to the AFL decider. So it was a huge thrill to be selected in the Stingrays team to take on the North Ballarat Rebels, knowing I was going to play on the MCG on the biggest day of the footy season. The fact that St Kilda was playing Adelaide in the main game made it even more exciting. When I arrived at the ground to find out that we’d been allocated the St Kilda rooms, I nearly jumped through the roof.
The game started at 9 am and I ran around on a half-forward flank with my ponytail flapping in the breeze. It was a terrible look, but I thought I was pretty cool. I had a shot to put us in front near three-quarter time, but it hit the post. I still look back fondly on that day, even though we fell away in the last quarter and were beaten by 35 points. The Rebels were inspired by Adam Goodes, who kicked six goals. Nowadays, when we consider that Goodes has gone on to play 300 games and win a premiership and two Brownlow Medals, us Stingrays boys don’t feel too hard done by.
We were pretty shattered when we walked off the ground, but I was soon distracted by the sight of the St Kilda players arriving for the big game. I had the longest shower of all time because I didn’t want to leave the rooms. I hung around long enough to see a few Saints players get their ankles taped, then things got serious and all of us young fellas were kicked out. We all had a ticket to the game, but most of the other boys sold theirs outside the ground. I thought St Kilda was definitely going to beat the Crows and win its first premiership since 1966, so I wasn’t going to part with my ticket for any money. I ended up sitting among a heap of strangers, many of whom were Adelaide supporters. The day went completely pear-shaped when St Kilda lost, despite leading by 13 points at half-time. To this day, I still hate the Crows’ theme song.
My mood didn’t pick up until the Stingrays’ presentation night, when Rob Dean told me that I was a key part of his plans for the 1998 season. One more good year, he told me, and I’d be in the AFL.
4 PLAYER 4144
In the lead-up to the 1998 TAC Cup season, I went on a pre-season camp with the Dandenong Stingrays. One of the activities required us to write down some long-term goals that related to our overall footy career, and some short-term goals that related to the skills we wanted to improve. My long-term ambition was to kick a bucketload of goals for the Stingrays in 1998 then find my way onto an AFL list via that year’s draft. However, I knew that was going to be tough. Under the rules in place at the time, each AFL club was allowed to take only one seventeen-year-old in the draft. I needed to be a real standout prospect to get picked up. My short-term goal was to improve my aerobic fitness, though what I didn’t write was that I wanted to find a way of getting fitter without having to run!
By now, I was going to school in Hallam, where Eumemmerring College’s VCE campus was located, but schoolwork occupied few of my thoughts. The two things that did were girls and footy. A lot of kids from other schools around the area came to the campus, which meant that I was able to meet a whole new bunch of girls. Still, football was my number-one passion. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday—the days on which the Stingrays had training—I lived for the moment when the final bell sounded and I could grab my bag and jump on the first bus to Dandenong. I loved getting to training early. Although our sessions didn’t start until 5.30 pm, I often arrived at the ground at 4 pm and played games with teammates like Stephen Milne and Adam Ramanauskas.
Milney and I were the pranksters around the club. When we weren’t up to mischief—we loved rearranging the magnets on the coach’s board after he had picked the team—we amused ourselves by kicking balls through doorways and into rubbish bins. Sometimes we went into the middle of the oval and tried to kick 70-metre torpedo goals. Then we’d move over near the boundary line and try to split the big sticks from impossible angles. It was so much fun. We made bets with each other about whether we could get the ball to do something outrageous. I won so many of those bets that I still joke to Milney and Rama that I was the king of Shepley Oval.
Rama and I became great mates despite having very different personalities. Rama was very serious, not only about footy but about life in general. Sometimes he liked layerL to just sit on his own and think deeply about things. I never did that. I was always go-go-go. While he was analysing his opponent for an upcoming match, I’d be throwing water on someone or stealing their towel.
I also got along really well with Rob Dean and the club’s football manager, Steve ‘Spider’ Kennedy. Both had enjoyed good careers in grassroots footy in Melbourne’s south-east, and although neither had
made it to the AFL, they knew what it took to make the big time. Rob and Steve appreciated that I was a bit of a character and they embraced my larrikin streak rather than trying to quash it. They knew that at times I needed to be pulled into line, especially during running sessions when they often became frustrated at my laziness. They encouraged me to take my football seriously. But they never expected me to stop having fun.
There were times during the early rounds of the 1998 season when ‘Bad Fev’ bubbled to the surface, and Rob or Steve, who doubled as an assistant coach, would pull me aside and say, ‘Come on mate, give us something here.’ One such incident occurred during the first quarter of a game we played against the Bendigo Pioneers at the Wade Street Oval in Golden Square. I gave the umpire a fearful spray after he paid a free kick against me and was sent off for fifteen minutes. When I came back onto the ground, I took out my frustration on one of the Bendigo players, got reported and was sent off for the rest of the game. Former North Melbourne and Gold Coast midfielder Daniel Harris, who was playing for the Pioneers that day, remembers thinking that I was a lunatic who would never make it to the AFL.
But despite those down periods, the early part of our campaign was positive for me. I spent most of my time at centre half-forward and was regularly among the Stingrays’ best players. Still sporting my ponytail, I took heaps of marks, including a few speccies, and I kicked plenty of goals as well. And when I was unable to pluck a grab, I always had little Milney at my feet, desperate to crumb and put one through. Led by our joint captains Craig Jacotine and Chris Fortnam, who were both tough and skilled midfielders, we were a strong side all over the ground, and midway through the season we were sitting pretty on top of the ladder.
I also achieved a goal of mine when I played a senior game with the Beaconsfield Eagles in the local footy competition. Beaconsfield was a rival of Narre Warren and Berwick, but I wanted to run out for them because Shane Newman was playing there. The match took place on the Queen’s Birthday holiday and our opponent was Kilcunda Bass, a club based near Wonthaggi in south Gippsland. The Eagles’ coach was Geoff Ablett, brother of Gary Snr, while the runner was Michael Tuck, the AFL’s games record holder and Geoff’s brother-in-law. Michael’s son Shane, who would later become a valuable midfielder for Richmond, was among my teammates that day, and I lined up at full-forward opposed to former Richmond captain Jeff Hogg. Although I had played in a Vic Metro versus Vic Country trial match the day before, I kicked six goals in the first half, a pretty fair effort for a skinny sixteen-year-old. I sat on the bench in the second half because I was knackered.
Soon after the game, it was confirmed that I had been selected in the Vic Metro team for the national under-18 championships in Adelaide. Four of my Stingrays teammates were also chosen: Rama, Fortnam, Jacotine and Anthony Ferraro. We were rapt when Jacotine was named captain. We were coached by the former Carlton wingman David Dickson, who had played sixty-six games for the Blues during the 1970s. David was a great communicator. Unlike so many other coaches I’ve come across, he didn’t talk in riddles or footy jargon. The day before each game, he’d slip a letter under the bedroom door of each player that explained what he expected from us on the field.
I played at full-forward in our first match against Vic Country at a wet and windy Norwood Oval. Thanks to some great delivery from Jacotine, I kicked two goals as we cruised to a 48-point victory. However, a few days later, on the morning of our second-round clash with South Australia at Prospect Oval, I received a big surprise when I opened my letter from the coach. He wanted me to play at full-back on sharpshooter Daniel Schell, who later that year would be drafted by the Fremantle Dockers. I’d never played at full-back before, but I was excited by the challenge. My cause was helped by heavy rain that turned the contest into a mud bath. Anyway, I kept Schell goalless, for which I drew plenty of pats on the back from David after the game, and we flogged them by 40 points—if not for the efforts of SA’s best player, Matthew Pavlich, the margin would have been far greater. Dad, who’d made the trip over to Adelaide for the carnival, was proud as punch. The next day he bought a copy of the Adelaide Advertiser, as he knew that ‘B Fevola’ would be listed among the best players. A decade and a half later, he’s still got the match report pinned up at his house.
I was back in the forward line for our last game against Western Australia at Football Park. I did hardly anything in the opening three quarters, but came to life in the last by kicking two goals in a minute. The first came after a strong overhead mark about 40 metres out; the second was a snap over my shoulder from about the same distance. Other than the goals, my main contribution was putting WA’s star midfielder Des Headland off his game by roughing him up behind the play. My attempt to be tough infuriated the coach. ‘He’s got to play his role. It’s a team thing,’ he yelled at our runner after Des crashed to the turf and I started scuffling with his WA teammates. Despite good performances from centre half-back Luke Penny and half-forward Heath Scotland, we lost by 14 points, but thankfully, WA’s previous loss to Vic Country meant that we won the title anyway.
I hadn’t done enough to make the All Australian team, but I still managed to attract some media attention. Writing in Inside Football, under the headline ‘Unearthing some draft-day diamonds’, long-serving football administrator Brian Waldron listed me as one of the top-ten draft prospects to emerge from the carnival:
Powerful 188cm athlete who will provide recruiting managers with a dilemma. Played as a key-position layerL player throughout the carnival, probably because of his aerial strength. He is also a thumping kick, which makes him valuable for a key position at AFL level. Fevola will be drafted to play as a marking half-forward/ backman, therefore he needs to have the capacity to improve his endurance. His ability to keep his feet in contests will be a bonus.
It was during the Adelaide carnival that I talked my way into a documentary being made about the 1998 AFL draft. Klaus Toft had made his name filming nature documentaries but had become intrigued by the dynamics of the draft, particularly the relationships between the young kids with big dreams and the recruiters whose job it was to choose which players made the grade and which didn’t. Klaus had approached Rob Dean and Steve Kennedy during the 1998 pre-season and they had recommended that he base his documentary on Rama. They thought Rama had the maturity to deal with the pressure of having a film crew follow him around during the most important footy season of his life to date. As a result, Klaus decided to spend the year following the fortunes of Rama and also the seventeen-year-old West Australian Des Headland. Given the importance of the national under-18 championships for all AFL hopefuls, Klaus closely followed Des and Rama throughout their time in Adelaide. And because I was one of Rama’s best mates, I ended up chatting to Klaus quite a bit. He decided that my story was worth telling too—I think he also enjoyed the personality that I showed when the camera was rolling—and he made me the third key character in the documentary. Naturally, the film was called The Draft.
When it came to collecting material about me, one of the first things Klaus did was interview some recruiters, and their responses were not exactly positive. Kinnear Beatson from the Brisbane Lions said he was worried that I wasn’t tall enough or strong enough to be a key forward, then added: ‘Brendan’s a 17-year-old adolescent and sometimes, when he’s not performing at his best, his body language isn’t overly encouraging from a recruiting perspective.’ Collingwood recruiting boss Noel Judkins was also unsure about me: ‘His body language is, ah, sort of … he still looks pretty confident about himself.’ Ray ‘Slug’ Jordan, who was talent-spotting for Melbourne, said: ‘There isn’t something that just stands out and grabs you.’
When I was at school or at a footy club, I just about always came across as bubbly and on top of the world. But that didn’t mean I always felt that way inside. Rather, as Mum knew only too well, I had perfected the art of hiding any dark feelings behind a veneer of carry-on. Interestingly, Klaus managed to capture some of these dark feelings i
n his documentary. At one stage, I told him that I was worried that I wasn’t good enough to make it in the AFL: ‘Some people are born with it, born with a football brain, football skills. But I don’t think I was.’ I also told Klaus I was worried about coping with the pressure that comes with being an AFL player. I didn’t know it at the time, but Steve Kennedy had cottoned on to the fact that I felt unsure about myself. He explained what he knew in layerL Rama’s engaging autobiography, Nine Lives, written with Age journalist Emma Quayle:
Brendan lacked confidence. People who didn’t know him thought he had too much of it—the other teams didn’t like him because he was always chattering away, but he doubted himself a lot, I think, and he was basically a good kid. He didn’t always do the right thing, but he always wanted to do the right thing. He got in a bit of trouble, but if he had someone steering him in the right direction he was usually all right.
It was when I spent time away from the confines of the Stingrays’ set-up that negative thoughts wormed their way deep into my mind. Sometimes when I was at home or hanging out with my mates, I began to feel that playing in the AFL was going to involve far too much responsibility. I was seventeen, after all, and my mates were having big nights on the grog and the bongs, but I was rarely involved. If I was going to be a professional footballer, I simply couldn’t do that stuff, and Mum made sure I didn’t. I’d occasionally go with the boys to the Hallam pub on a Thursday night and I’d find myself thinking, ‘Why don’t I just give up on footy and get on it with the boys? Is playing in the AFL actually going to be worth it?’
Fev: In My Own Words Page 4