Richmond rookie draftee Tylar Young’s off-beat path to the AFL
Tylar Young was drowning his sporting sorrows at his local when he was convinced to pick up a footy again. Four years later, he’s one of Richmond’s brightest prospects, writes SHANNON GILL.
Code sports
December 10, 2022
There’s wall-to-wall big screens in the front bar of the Star Hotel in Albury showing sport from the big smoke and around the world.
It has become the choice venue for sports fans on the Victoria/New South Wales border to watch the big moments, but it can also lay claim as the birthplace of an unlikely sporting story of its own.
Paywall: https://www.codesports.com.au/afl/richmond/richmond-rookie-draftee-tylar-youngs-offbeat-path-to-the-afl/news-story/a91d5c73ff9d2318e7f856c062761b5c
Here's the full article:
There’s wall-to-wall big screens in the front bar of the Star Hotel in Albury showing sport from the big smoke and around the world.
It has become the choice venue for sports fans on the Victoria/New South Wales border to watch the big moments, but it can also lay claim as the birthplace of an unlikely sporting story of its own.
Four years ago, 20-year-old Tylar Young sat in that bar having a beer with his dad Darryl and Darryl’s mate Dave Martin.
Young had football dreams of the round ball type. His teenage years had been spent playing centre-back for Albury City FC, but a recent trip to Melbourne had left him disillusioned.
“I’d come down to Melbourne the year before (2018) to trial for soccer and it didn’t really eventuate,” Young tells CODE Sports.
The session at the affectionately known ‘StarBar’ was a kind of drowning of sorrows for Young, who was now back in Albury wondering what to do next. Martin was the treasurer of North Albury Footy Club and suggested he consider having a kick of the oval-shaped ball in 2019.
“We were at the pub and he said, ‘Why don’t you give footy a crack again’ and I thought I may as well. I knew a few of the boys at North Albury and it all happened real quick after that.”
Four years later, 24-year-old Tylar Young has just been added to the powerful Richmond Football Club via the rookie draft, completing perhaps the most unique path to an AFL list seen in recent times.
“It’s pretty crazy to think it was just one conversation, and it’s all happened from there and potentially set my life up.”
*****
How the 196cm and 92kg key defence prospect was initially lost to footy is a lesson for all sports about the power of television.
Young had played footy as a child, but as he entered his teenage years the Brisbane Lions, who he supported, were going through a rough patch.
“We didn’t have pay TV and Brisbane would always play the pay TV Sunday arvo games as they weren’t too flash,” Young says.
“So I didn’t watch a whole lot of footy to be honest.”
The world game quickly usurped the local version.
“I had to pick footy or soccer because they were clashing, my mates were playing soccer so I chose soccer.”
It was a decision he embraced far beyond kicking around for Albury City.
“I’m a Chelsea supporter, so I’d stay up and watch the games at 2 or 3am, and I didn’t really follow the footy at all.”
Footy was not even his second or third choice. He played state level table tennis (“I won a bit of money in that”) and in summer, his soccer passion was replicated on the cricket pitch, where he was playing in junior representative teams as a batter who could bowl sharply from a troubling height.
Instead of Jonathan Brown, Young looked up to Didier Drogba then Eden Hazard, and closer to home, Shane Watson.
“I was a batter and bowler, so seeing him bat and bowl and field in slips, that was the dream.”
*****
Young had always wanted to be an elite athlete but after the disappointment of his soccer quest, that appeared over.
Heading down to North Albury was about having some fun with some mates to help shake him out of a funk, but things quickly moved in another direction.
After starting in the reserves, he was promoted to the seniors the next week and would remain there for the rest of the season.
Someone with Young’s size, athletic traits and raw talent were a coach’s dream, but by the end of the season then-North Albury coach Isaac Muller was happy to share news about the gem they’d unearthed. Muller had a connection with Frankston VFL coach Danny Ryan and Young played a single game there at the end of 2019.
“I pretty much signed there and then for the following year,” Young says.
He’d gone from not having played football for seven years to playing in the VFL within one season, so the decision was made to move to Melbourne to study, work part-time in disability care and chase the footy dream.
Covid destroyed any 2020 development, but Young’s belief grew after he played more VFL games in 2021 and further honed his craft at Bundoora in the Northern Footy League when he wasn’t required at Frankston.
“When I was playing against blokes in the AFL and holding my own, it was like, ‘Well this is what I want to do now. I can do it and it’s my goal’.”
Meanwhile, Richmond had started keeping tabs on him.
They’d had a chat to him during 2021 after Bundoora coach Michael Ryan had sung his praises to then-Richmond recruiter Will Thursfield.
Ryan firmly believed he was capable of being drafted, and suggested that playing in Richmond’s VFL team under the eyes of its AFL operation would be the best path. So he moved to Punt Road last summer.
It still didn’t stop him revisiting another sporting love though.
Less than a year before he was drafted, he’d come straight from Richmond time trials in the morning to knock over suburban cricket batsmen in the afternoon.
*****
This year would be a breakout VFL season for Young.
The only games he missed were through injury and each week he took on the best big forwards in the league, many established AFL-listed players.
Importantly, Richmond immediately felt at home.
“There were a few Bundoora boys there on the VFL list, all the AFL boys that came down and played in the VFL had a great connection, I just loved it,” Young says.
“The care and time they put into all the guys on the list, it was just unreal.”
As the season wore on Richmond’s AFL recruiters started making positive noises to Young’s manager.
The message was constant; you’re going well and keep doing what you’re doing.
As draft time neared things were getting clearer. “By then my manager had told me it’s looking good to get drafted,” Young says.
While his name wasn’t read out in the national draft, Richmond selected him at pick 26 in the rookie draft days later.
Richmond were clearly thrilled with the progress he made and recruiting manager Matt Clark thinks that will continue within a full-time AFL program.
“His natural size and athleticism, combined with his rate of improvement gives us confidence he has what it takes,” Clark says.
There is hope that Young will be groomed as a successor for key defensive veterans Dylan Grimes and Robbie Tarrant.
*****
Young wasn’t at Punt Road, in Melbourne, or even Albury when it was all made official.
He was off following another sport just like he’d spent his teenage years.
“I was in Perth at the cricket,” Young says with a laugh.
For the journey that started four years at the pub over a beer with his dad, it was fitting that the next step was confirmed in a similar setting, albeit on the other side of Australia.
“We had a little outdoor box, drinks and food, with my close mates and dad.”
As Australia racked up the runs against the West Indies, Richmond called him with the news he craved.
“Emotions were flying around everywhere, it was an unreal day. Big day, that’s for sure!”
Just as it will be at the Star Hotel in Albury for family and friends if Young gets to pull on the yellow and black in a senior game.
The publican at the Star can thank Dave Martin for that.
“He’s a diehard Tigers supporter as well,” Young laughs.
“It’s all come around full circle.”
https://www.codesports.com.au/afl/richmond/richmond-rookie-draftee-tylar-youngs-offbeat-path-to-the-afl/news-story/a91d5c73ff9d2318e7f856c062761b5c
