Draft at the end of a footy dreamEmma Quayle | November 11, 2009
DUSTIN Martin was born in Castlemaine, and grew up there. He moved to Bendigo at the start of this year and in two-and-a-bit weeks will be drafted from the TAC Cup's Pioneers. In time, he may become the best player produced by the AFL's New South Wales scholarship scheme.
How can this possibly be so? Let's go back a little bit. Martin has always loved football. As a kid, the first thing he did when he woke up each morning was reach for the ball beside his bed. For as long as he can remember, the thing he most wanted to do was play for an AFL team.
Problem was, it was all he wanted to do.
During 2006, Martin started skipping his year-nine classes. Then he started skipping full days. When he did go to school, he couldn't maintain any interest in it, spending most of his time mucking around, not listening and driving teachers mad. ''I was never really, really bad or anything. I was just stuffing around all the time, being a real idiot,'' he said.
''I probably wish I'd stayed at school now, but at the time I didn't really like it and I was never going. I was playing up a bit so I just left, and my dad kind of cracked it at me.''
Martin's father, Shane, who lives in Sydney, couldn't be too hard on his teenage son. ''I couldn't tell him off too much,'' he said, ''because I was exactly the same.''
Still, the last thing he wanted was for Dustin to sit around, doing nothing with his time except wasting it.
He moved him up and put him to work: Dustin helped out at his dad's transport company, working on the computer, loading up trucks and driving forklifts. He worked with Shane's partner too: she created and sold gym wear, so he'd help her make it, worked in a couple of her shops and helped her try to sell it to gyms.
By the end of the year, he was focused again. ''He was a lot more motivated, and I had him working hard,'' Shane said. ''I had him working 12 or 13 hour days so he did it pretty tough and he really took to it. I told him, don't think you're coming up here to sit on your backside, and by the time he went back, he'd grown up a whole lot.''
Martin's football found some direction in Sydney too. He had played for the Pioneers' under-15 squad before moving home, and played pretty well. In Sydney he started playing for a local under-16 team but after dominating the first four games he moved to Campbelltown's under-18 team, and into a more challenging competition.
There, he met Ryan Bottin-Noonan, who had signed a NSW scholarship with the Swans and was getting to spend some time training with the team. Martin met a few other boys who had scholarships, decided he wanted one too and then realised he wasn't eligible: he would have to live in Sydney for three years first.
Still, the thought that those boys were so close to an AFL team made him realise there was no reason he couldn't get there too.
''It sort of made me think it was right there to grab,'' he said.
''I'd always wanted it, but I'd never really chased it. It made me think, I've got to go back and get serious about this whole thing now. It made me really want it.''
Martin was back in Castlemaine with his mother Kathy and two brothers by Christmas 2007 and after training all summer with the Castlemaine senior team - planning all the while to make the Bendigo side, believing that he could - he started in the middle.
Every week or two he'd check in with coach Jamie Elliott: had the Pioneers called yet?
He didn't need to worry. During pre-season, regional manager Ray Byrne heard Martin was back in town, but he wanted to let him settle back down before calling him up.
After his round-one game at Castlemaine the Pioneers thought they wanted him back in the program; four weeks in, they knew they did.
Martin started training there midway through the year, and Byrne knew from his first session that the Pioneers had a very good player on their hands. ''His fitness was amazing considering he hadn't been in the system at all,'' he said. ''His skills were great. He picked everything up, took everything in. He just looked like a natural-born footballer.''
Then came the last twist. Martin started playing for the Pioneers with a month left in the season, and not too many recruiters still watching his side, which didn't produce any draftees.
He dominated the first match, was just as good in the second and while hanging out at a friend's place during the next week, his phone rang.
On the line was Kinnear Beatson, the Sydney recruiting manager who, having been told about Martin, had watched the first quarter of his second game thinking he may just have unearthed a very promising - and unknown - late draft pick. Then he looked at his record, and realised the teenager had been born two months too late to qualify for the draft.
Beatson phoned him to find out for sure - and also to check how long he'd lived in Sydney, with a scholarship in mind.
It was a near miss on both fronts and the thought that a recruiter had actually noticed him both stunned Martin and gave him confidence.
''I couldn't even remember what he said,'' he recalled. ''I just got off the phone and looked at my friend and said: 'What the hell?' ''
Playing that last month gave Martin a better understanding of what he would be in for this year, too. He was a Pioneer star the second the season started and by the end of the under-18 championships mid-year, most recruiters were in love with his neat two-sided skills and his attack on the ball, among other things.
As his season - TAC Cup football, state football and an invitation to the draft camp - unfolded, all he kept thinking was, ''do as well as you can''.
''It was all pretty new to me,'' Martin said, ''but I just wanted to get as high up as I could with everything. When Ray sat me down and said, 'you've been invited to the draft camp,' it felt like it had happened so quickly.''
Martin boarded with a teammate in Bendigo this year; having already completed a certificate three in personal training he began working for an electrician friend of his father's.
''It's bloody complicated stuff,'' he said. ''But it's been good. I reckon I've learned some new skills.''
Since the season ended he has been running, going to the gym, trying to keep his mind off the thing he wants so badly and making sure that when he walks through his new club's door, he won't have too much catching up to do.
More than anything, he is glad he moved back home.
''I've changed since that time in Sydney, I reckon.
''I made myself go for it, and so far it's worked out pretty well.''
http://www.theage.com.au/news/rfnews/draft-at-the-end-of-a-footy-dream/2009/11/10/1257615039723.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
