I spoke to Mum about those doubts, and as a result she began fearing that I was going to give up on my dream. That just added to the stress in her life. Unlike Dad, who was happily remarried to a nice lady by the name of Raylene, Mum had been through another traumatic relationship breakdown. I tried to help her, though, and she recognised this. ‘We’ve sort of had a bit of a bad trot this year, and he’s been my rock,’ Mum told Klaus. But what really settled Mum’s nerves was me falling back in love with the idea of playing in the AFL. I’d played a few great games for the Stingrays during August and that had lifted my spirits in a big way. My AFL dream again seemed exciting.
Some of my teammates got an early taste of the big time when they were asked to be top-up players in the AFL’s reserves competition. At that stage, most of the reserves games were still being played as curtain-raisers for AFL matches, which meant that my Stingrays teammate Lucas Smith was able to run around for St Kilda, against Richmond, before a crowd of more than 70,000. Another of our young defenders, Toby Thurstans, played for Collingwood in front of a Queen’s Birthday crowd of more than 60,000. Sometimes blokes got called up on short notice. Our co-captain, Chris Fortnam, was at school one Friday afternoon when Richmond rang and asked him to head straight to the MCG, and a couple of hours later he was running around for the Tigers. Rama got one of the best deals. He was flown to Sydney to play for Hawthorn’s reserves against the Swans at the SCG.
The boys who played reserves games were paid $400 for their efforts. That was a fortune to us teenagers. Still, it became a game among the boys to pinch shorts and socks from the club they represented and then wear them to Stingrays training the following week. I think Rama was the only bloke who refused to steal the shorts after his layerL reserves games; he was such an honest and upstanding kid that he only took the socks. I never played a reserves game while I was at the Stingrays. The main reason was that, at seventeen years old, I was one of the youngest players at the club, and it was usually the older boys who were selected as top-up players.
By the end of the home-and-away season, the Stingrays were on top of the ladder and I had wrapped up the TAC Cup goal-kicking award. In the lead-up to the finals, we were inspired and entertained by a trio of ex-footballers who spoke at our annual Stingrays sports night: two-time Essendon premiership player Mark Harvey, ex-Richmond hard man Mal Brown, and former St Kilda, Melbourne and Geelong forward Mark Jackson. ‘Harvs’ told us that we had to work hard, not take any shortcuts, and listen to our coaches. ‘Big Mal’ told us all about his role in the infamous brawl that happened during an Essendon versus Richmond game at Windy Hill in 1974. We all laughed when Mal, a bloke renowned for loving a blue, tried to tell us that he was an innocent bystander. ‘Jacko’ was pretty mad, to be honest, but he did have some quality advice to pass on. He said that the reason he’d averaged four goals per game during his VFL career was because he kicked more than 100 goals on each night that he trained. That made me feel like I was on the right track. I hated running, but I never took shortcuts when it came to practising my shots on goal.
Unfortunately, our hopes of making up for our grand final loss in 1997 were dashed in the first week of the TAC Cup finals. We were expected to beat the Geelong Falcons, but a red-haired kid called Cameron Ling kicked a bag of goals and we lost. We were bundled out of the premiership race the following week. I finished the season with sixty-eight goals. Considering that I had spent quite a bit of time playing at centre half-forward, roaming up the ground away from the big sticks, I thought it was a pretty damn good effort. The Stingrays’ coaches thought so as well, voting me runner-up in our best-and-fairest award. So did the coaches of the other clubs, who named me at full-forward in the TAC Cup team of the year. Rama was also selected, on the half-back flank, as were future AFL stars like Brady Rawlings (wing), Lenny Hayes (ruck-rover), Heath Scotland (interchange bench), Craig Bolton (interchange bench), Jude Bolton (half-back flank) and Danny Jacobs (wing).
Shortly after the Stingrays’ season came to an end, I was among the seventy lucky lads invited to the AFL draft camp, which was held at the Victoria Police Academy in the suburb of Waverley. Nowadays, the draft camp, which has been renamed the AFL draft combine in imitation of the American NFL, is a huge affair. The kids are interviewed and scrutinised by countless radio, television, print and internet reporters, while the whole thing is filmed by the AFL’s internal news agency, AFL Media. But back in 1998 it was a basic affair run specifically for the recruiters. There was physical testing, skills testing, mental testing and interviews with clubs. We also had complete medicals in which our sight and hearing were tested, our skinfolds were taken, and we were looked over by a physiotherapist. I did well in some of the physical testing, recording the fastest 5-metre sprint layerL time (0.98 seconds), and I was OK in the reaction-time and peripheral vision tests. However, I was off the pace in the endurance tests. Rama impressed the recruiting scouts by notching the highest vertical jump (81 centimetres). I had no issues with the skills testing, which was held at Waverley Park and was overseen by former St Kilda full-back Danny Frawley. My marking strength and kicking ability drew plenty of nods from the blokes watching on from the sidelines.
The mental testing was much tougher, as far as I was concerned. We had to fill out a psychological profile and I had no idea what to write on the page. I can’t even remember if I wrote anything at all. When it came to the interviews, I spoke to Adelaide, Richmond, Geelong and Carlton. Shane O’Sullivan was the Blues’ recruiting manager at the time and he remembers asking me, ‘Do you want to be a footballer or a rock star?’ Apparently I laughed and said, ‘Both.’ I’m not sure I said that. Who says that to a recruiter? But Shane swears that I did, and maybe he’s right. I just said whatever came into my head, and I probably came across as brash at times. A few times I was asked, ‘What are you going to do if you don’t make it as a footballer?’ I always responded by saying, ‘I am going to play footy, so I don’t have to worry about that.’ Upon hearing that, the recruiters often just shook their heads and said, ‘Fair enough.’ The thing was, I’d been telling myself since I was a little kid that I was going to play AFL football.
Geelong was the only club with which I had a serious discussion. A number of other clubs seemed concerned by my class-clown reputation and the poor body language I often showed on the field, but the Cats’ recruiting manager, Stephen Wells, appeared unfazed by those things. We even talked about the schools in Geelong where I could do year 12. Rama, meanwhile, came away from a chat with an interstate club with a funny story. He’d told them that moving away from Victoria would be good because he wouldn’t have to worry about getting so many free tickets for his mates. Des Headland wore a Fremantle polo shirt to his interview with the Brisbane Lions, which had pick 1 in the draft; the Dockers had pick 2. Des certainly wasn’t shy about letting the Lions know where he wanted to go.
The interest shown by Geelong gave me a bit of confidence as the actual draft neared, although I wasn’t really sure what would happen. ‘Hopefully, if I don’t get drafted this year, I can come back next year and improve all the things that I need to improve, and hopefully get drafted next year,’ I told Klaus. Although surely, I thought to myself, I’d done enough to be drafted now. The vast majority of AFL players came from the TAC Cup, and I had just been named in the top twenty-two players in that competition. I knew I had my flaws, but I also knew how to play footy. I wasn’t all that fussed about which club I went to, either. Sure, I was a passionate St Kilda supporter, but I didn’t really care if the Saints wanted me or not. I just wanted to be picked by someone. That said, I was hoping to stay in Victoria with my mates, not head to an interstate club.
I became even more confident when I was invited to be part of the draft-day telecast on Channel 7. Only the players who were expected to go in the top fifteen were invited to layerL be part of the telecast; all up, 1780 young footballers had nominated. On the big day, 1 November 1998, I headed to Melbourne Park while my Stingrays teammates prep
ared to watch things unfold from their couches at home. As the event began, I sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair alongside Mum, Dad and Jason. I really wanted to get drafted to prove to Mum that all her hard work had led to something good. ‘I’m not too good at school. I don’t do too well,’ I told Klaus in the lead-up to the draft. ‘So she’d be just as happy [as me]. It would be like her getting drafted as well.’ Despite his polo-shirt stunt at the draft camp, it came as little surprise when the Lions opened proceedings by calling out Des Headland’s name. Des was shattered when the Lions chose him, and his father started crying at the thought of his son heading to the other side of the country. But Des looked a bit happier when he came forward to be interviewed by Sandy Roberts. Four years after accepting his fate and moving to Brisbane, he played in a premiership. Fremantle took another WA boy, Justin Longmuir, with pick 2. The Sydney Swans had three of the next six picks and they took a couple of South Australian lads, Nic Fosdike and Ryan Fitzgerald, along with Victorian kid Jude Bolton. Lenny Hayes was drafted by St Kilda at 11, then Rama became the first Stingrays player taken when Essendon recruiting manager Adrian Dodoro called out his name. The Bombers had earlier gone for New South Wales/ ACT midfielder Mark McVeigh with their first selection.
Although the first fifteen picks came and went without my name being called, I was not overly concerned. I was convinced that Geelong was going to draft me with their first selection, pick 17. Brady Rawlings went to North Melbourne at 15 then Brett Burton headed to the Crows, and I prepared myself for my moment in the sun. The television cameras focused on the Geelong table and Stephen Wells read out a number followed by the name … Peter Street. I was flummoxed. ‘Bugger me,’ I thought. They’d passed on me, a gun key forward, and instead gone for a gangly, uncoordinated 211-centimetre ruckman from Tasmania. I felt further deflated when Daniel Schell, the bloke I’d flogged in the under-18 championships in Adelaide, was taken by Fremantle with the next pick. Suddenly I was nervous. I was still playing up for the camera, smiling whenever Channel 7 or Klaus thrust a lens towards me, but things were starting to look a tad grim. My biggest problem was that I was only seventeen and a number of clubs had already selected the one seventeen-year-old they were allowed.
Dad patted me on the back and then went back to stroking his Chopper moustache. ‘She’ll be right,’ he muttered. Mum just sat there, stony-faced. Out in Hallam, Rama’s family was celebrating, but he was glued to the TV, yelling out ‘C’mon Brendan’ and hoping I would soon get picked up.
More names were called. The Cats, who had not yet taken a seventeen-year-old, went for local boy David Clarke with pick 21. Shortly after, they chose Gippslander David Wojcinski. My mood darkened further when the Western Bulldogs prompted gasps around the room by using pick 30 to draft former St Kilda wingman Nicky Winmar. It was layerL getting beyond a joke. Sure, Winmar had been a superstar in his day, but after twelve seasons and 230 games with the Saints, his time had surely passed. I sat quietly on my chair as my Vic Metro teammates Brad Oborne and Danny Jacobs were selected by Collingwood and Essendon respectively.
I had just about given up all hope by the time Carlton had the thirty-eighth selection in the draft. To my great surprise, Shane O’Sullivan leaned into the microphone on his desk and said, ‘Player 4144, Brendan Fevola, Dandenong Stingrays.’ The emotion that gripped my body when my name was read out was like nothing I had experienced before. Dad reached over and shook my hand while the AFL’s talent guru, Kevin ‘Shifter’ Sheehan, gave his run-down of my attributes: ‘188 centimetres is a terrific size. Very rarely missed the goals. It’s a surprise he’s gone so late. A very good choice for Carlton.’ Mum was delighted for me, though she just looked shell-shocked by the whole thing. She had played the biggest role in making my dream come true. She had ferried me to training and to games all over the state, giving up a good job to make time for these things. Now, all her sacrifices had paid off.
I was handed a Carlton cap and I broke into a big grin as I put it on my head. I was pumped. Mike Sheahan, the chief footy writer for the Herald Sun, noticed how excited I was. The following day, he wrote:
Getting an opportunity is all that counts for kids these days. Carlton’s first two selections, Murray Vance and Brendan Fevola, seemed overwhelmed by the idea of joining the famous Blues, particularly after an enthusiastic welcome from coach David Parkin. Vance was a Collingwood supporter, Fevola a Saint. Not any longer.
Once my official commitments were out of the way, the first thing I did was ring Chris Newman. He was stoked. Little did we know it at the time, but he would enjoy the same experience the following year. Mum drove me to Chris’ house and we had a party in Birch Court with our close friends. It was awesome. Our favourite song at the time was ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’ by the American band Green Day, and we played it over and over again, singing it at the top of our lungs.
In all, five Dandenong Stingrays players were drafted: Rama; myself; Toby Thurstans, who went to Port Adelaide with the pick after me; Craig Jacotine, who went to Collingwood at pick 41; and ruckman Steven Rode, nabbed by Hawthorn with pick 66. I was the only seventeen-year-old from the Stingrays who made it onto an AFL list. Chris Fortnam, our co-captain, who had the talent to be a superstar at the elite level, missed out. Stevie Milne was ignored as well. He would eventually make it to the big time, but he’d do it via the back door, otherwise known as the rookie list.
In the days after I was drafted, heaps of people came to our house to congratulate me. Among them was Ricky Nixon, a registered AFL player agent who had taken on the job as my manager and sorted out all my financial arrangements with Carlton. The fact that I needed a manager made me feel extra-important. Ricky was keen to impress on me layerL that life in the AFL was pretty tough, but most of the young blokes who dropped in patted me on the back and told me that I was going to be a superstar.
Mum seemed unable to enjoy that time. She had, with great difficulty, kept my life on the rails, but now she felt like I was going to be torn from her grasp. I didn’t know it at the time, but the thought of handing me over to a football club made her so nervous that she felt sick. She sensed that unless I had enough support and guidance, my new adventure was every chance to go horribly wrong. ‘They have control,’ she told Klaus. ‘They have control of my son.’
5 THE LAST KICK OF THE MILLENNIUM
I was finally allowed to train with Carlton after finishing my year 11 exams. As far as I was concerned, the delay had been unnecessary. I was now an AFL player, so footy was all I wanted to concentrate on. The first time I put on my Blues training gear and jogged out onto the club’s famous home ground, Princes Park (known then as Optus Oval), I felt a huge buzz. I still had Klaus’ camera crew following me around, and at one stage I turned to the cameraman and said, ‘I hate running. If you could play football and not run it would be good.’ Having the camera at training meant I copped a bit of shit from the boys, but at least I’d gotten rid of the straggly ponytail that I’d sported right through my TAC Cup career. That decision saved me from copping even more grief.
It was late November 1998, and despite having slipped well down the ladder since winning the 1995 premiership, Carlton was still regarded as a proud club with a reputation for consistently achieving success. As I looked around the field, there were champions everywhere. Craig Bradley and Brett Ratten were running laps. Anthony Koutoufides was kicking 50-metre goals with ease. Stephen Silvagni, who a couple of years later would be named the competition’s full-back of the century, was strutting around like he owned the place. ‘SOS’ had been the first bloke I’d seen when I’d walked into the club that day. He had come up to me and said, ‘G’day, I’m Stephen Silvagni.’ I remember thinking, ‘No shit, mate!’ I was just in awe of him. I thought about the Newman boys, both Carlton supporters who had pictures of SOS all over their bedroom walls. I was like, ‘Man, I’m a teammate of Stephen Silvagni. This is massive.’
In the middle of it all was the coach, David Parkin. With five VF
L/AFL premierships to his name—one as a player with Hawthorn and four as a coach, three of them with Carlton—‘Parko’ was a legend of the game. He enjoyed an enormous amount of respect from the players, partly for empowering the boys to have a say in the way the team was managed. Parko was the first coach to introduce the idea of a leadership group, made up of respected players who advised him on team selections and training methods. A long-time lecturer in sports science at Deakin University, Parko was also adamant that players should lead balanced lives. He wanted to make sure that all of us completed our secondary education then did a university course or took on a part-time job. Early on, Parko pulled me aside and insisted that I concentrate on finishing my VCE out at Hallam in 1999, rather than worry about making an instant impact at the Blues. He said that if training clashed with classes, he wanted me to go to class. I was like, ‘Are you serious? I just want to play footy. I don’t want to go to school.’ He sounded just like one of my teachers, and I was a bit shocked about that. But looking back, he was obviously right. You’ve got to try and have something to fall back on after footy.
Besides, I was a bit of a legend at school. My starting salary at Carlton was $23,000 per year, plus match payments. It might not sound like much nowadays, but it was a fortune for a seventeen-year-old kid. I became the king of the canteen. I’d buy chips and drinks for all my mates and anyone who would do my homework for me.
You always knew where you stood with Parko. He was quite a sight when he got fired up and his hands started pumping furiously and those veins began appearing at the side of his head. I copped a few sprays from him when I wasn’t giving my all at training. On one occasion, Parko saw me lagging behind in our running sessions and called me into his office, allowing our talk to be captured by Klaus’ camera. As I sat stony-faced, occasionally nodding, Parko gave me some advice:
Fev: In My Own Words Page 5