Sydney Morning Herald - Latest News
· collected 2026-09-05 · by Madeleine Heffernan, Peter Ryan
In his nearly 30 years of finding footy talent, David Walls has sat down to talk with thousands of young people who dream of becoming professional footballers.
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who → find → footballers
He’s watched them play from the sidelines at games and on countless hours of video; reviewed their psychological tests and physical tests; analysed their statistics; met with their coaches, employers, schoolteachers; and spent time in their orbit on training camps – to work out who they are, and who they could become.
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they → watch → camps
But the picture is never complete until he visits them at their family home.
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he → visit → home
“You can’t bullshit in front of Mum or Dad,” says Walls, once a fresh-faced rookie himself, now head of player personnel at Fremantle footy club.
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Walls → bullshit → club
“Even siblings will start to say, ‘That’s not true’,” Walls tells us.
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Walls → start → us
“Dads, generally, are trying to sell them as footballers and mums just want to make sure they’re good people.
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’re → try → footballers
”
Australian rules football has a rich history of freakishly talented players (Buddy Franklin, Nick Daicos, Erin Phillips) and legendary coaches (Leigh Matthews, the late Ron Barassi and Walls’s own father, Robert).
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football → have → players
Less lauded but no less critical to success are the recruiters and list managers.
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recruiters → laud → success
They determine who is in and out of a club, how to mix new blood – a handful of teen draft picks each year – with existing teams, a painstaking task that culminates in the nerve-wracking annual draft in November (for the men) and December (for the women).
Theirs is not a glamorous job.
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Theirs → determine → women
At games, you’ll spot them in puffer jackets, perched on camping chairs with binoculars, pen and notebook.
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you → spot → binoculars
Other times, they’ll be hunkered down scrutinising footage, crunching player data.
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they → hunker → data
Many fans like to think they could do a better job.
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they → like → job
“I think every sports fan in Australia is picking their footy team or cricket team,” veteran AFL talent expert Kevin Sheehan tells us.
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Sheehan → think → us
“It’s a tough business, the business of drafting, and it’s make or break for the careers of not just the boys [and girls] but the scouts who are looking at them.”
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who → ’ → them
More than 624,000 children and adults play football in Australia.
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children → play → Australia
Whittling down the best young players takes years, money and skill.
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Whittling → whittle → years
The stakes are high: the best players, like artists, can create something out of nothing while players with poor character or decision-making can drag down a whole team for years.
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players → create → years
So how do the clubs in the national league (18 men’s, 18 women’s) find the next generation of elite players?
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clubs → find → players
What sets a future professional apart from a skillful amateur?
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professional → set → amateur
And how can young people maximise their chances of playing at the ’G one day?
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people → maximise → G
At 205 centimetres, Harry Van Hattum stands out in a crowd.
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Hattum → stand → crowd
He also has a massive running leap, 103 centimetres into the air, just a touch higher than West Coast icon Nic Naitanui’s 102 centimetres jump as a junior.
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He → have → junior
High-flying ruckmen are back in vogue after the AFL changed the rules this year to stop other players wrestling them away from the centre bounce, although Van Hattum wants it known ruckmen are about more than their aerial manoeuvres: “It doesn’t matter your size when you’re using it [the ball] well …
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you → fly → it
I pride myself on having elite skills,” he told ESPN in August.
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he → pride → August
In short, the 18-year-old has the makings of a very modern ruckman and, consequently, he’s a top prospect in November’s draft.
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he → have → draft
‘I was definitely pretty nervous the first time I had a meeting with someone from a club, so I was trying to be super-professional and really well-behaved.
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I → have → club
But you have just got to be yourself …’
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you → get → ?
Yet it was only last year that Van Hattum put aside his other sporting pursuit, basketball – which he played at state level in under 12s and 14s – to focus on footy, and recruiters became part of his life.
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recruiters → put → life
“It was around then I started talking to recruiters a fair bit and getting calls from them and organising home visits and stuff like that over that summer,” he tells us.
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he → start → us
On a trip to New Zealand with the AFL national academy squad, made up of 50 of Australia’s most talented draft contenders, his every interaction was noted by recruiters, on the field and off.
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interaction → make → field
“You sit down with them and have lunch, dinner and different meetings with them on different days,” Van Hattum says, “so you get a really good sense of what their point of view is and what they are looking for from that.
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they → sit → that
I was definitely pretty nervous the first time I had a meeting with someone from a club, so I was trying to be super-professional and really well-behaved.
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I → have → club
But you have just got to be yourself, don’t lie, don’t make anything up – because obviously they will find out.”
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they → get → anything
Van Hattum has signed up with a manager, a crucial step in a junior’s progress to the AFL, and has, meanwhile, been playing footy for a dizzying array of sides: Ivanhoe Grammar, his school in Melbourne’s east; Vic Metro in the AFL national championships; the AFL academy; and the Northern Knights in the AFL Talent League, Victoria’s top under-18 competition, from which most draft picks are drawn.
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picks → sign → which
(Gifted players also come from state leagues, or the northern academies run by Sydney, Greater Western Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, or from next-generation academies run by all clubs for Indigenous and multicultural youth.)
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players → gift → youth
Van Hattum considered an invitation to play for Richmond’s VFL team, too, but enough was enough.
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enough → consider → team
“It’s pretty busy,” he says.
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he → ’ → ?
Through it all, he is trying to live a normal life: studying, playing golf, hanging out with schoolmates and getting on the tools to help his dad, Rod, build a granny flat in the backyard of his family’s Kangaroo Ground property.
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dad → try → property
He admits he sometimes feels like a lab rat.
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he → admit → rat
“It always lingers in the back of my head that there is an expectation about me and I have to perform well, but I just try to block it out of my mind and try to play to my best level and don’t think about the expectation on me every time.”
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I → linger → me
…and 145 more, not listed.
