The draft blows in
Emma Quayle
The Age
November 17, 2006
It is 20 years since the first national draft changed the face of football. Emma Quayle visits the original top-10 picks and finds that the draft of 1986 also changed their lives.
Pick 4 RICHARD ANDERSON (Richmond)Then a 24-year-old shooting star, recently plucked from his Adelaide University side to join Norwood.
What happened? Didn’t go to Richmond. Played country footy and won Norwood’s 1988 best and fairest.
Now director of students at St John’s Grammar in the Adelaide Hills, and father to Meg, 8, Ella, 6 and Jessie, 2.
RICHARD Anderson still has the No. 53 guernsey the Tigers sent when they drafted him. Back then, it was difficult to look at.
Anderson was 24 when Collingwood, St Kilda, Footscray and the Tigers wanted him to come play for them. But football was something he had only just started taking seriously, and their attention was too much.
He felt intimidated, and unsure, so he took a teaching job in Port Pirie and headed off, not even inclined to keep an eye on how Richmond was going.
"I didn’t want to think about it. I really did try to avoid it, because I’d worry and worry," said Anderson.
"I guess I tended instinctively not to follow the club, or absorb myself in it, because it all felt a bit odd. "It was all going too fast. I remember feeling like I had no control, and that was very unnerving. A lot of people thought I was mad, that I had this fantastic opportunity and here I was, running away from it. "It was flattering, but I didn’t understand it. It all felt very intimidating."
Anderson went back to Norwood in 1988, where he won a best-and-fairest, and made the state side. He had secret intentions to get to Punt Road at some stage, but felt under-prepared and kept telling himself: one more year.
Then came a back injury, and then a drop in form.
A teacher for 20 years now, Anderson was at Pembroke School in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs when Barnaby French and Angus Monfries came through, harbouring more focused big-league dreams than he had. "They’re so well prepared now," he said. "They grow up wanting it, and knowing how it works."
If he had his time over, Anderson would pack his bags, and not stop to worry. "I wish I could say I had played VFL. I really do, and I live with that regret."
9 ANDREW PAYZE (Essendon)Payze planned to get to Essendon, but 1987 wasn’t his best year, and he felt less convinced about it all. He didn’t go in 1988 either, and at the end of the next year his three-year tie to Windy Hill ended.
He was drafted again, by Richmond, but had an inkling the Crows were coming, and so didn’t go that time, either. An orignal Adelaide player, Payze cobbled together 14 games in two years, but doesn’t often wonder whether he should have started sooner.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/11/17/1163266783992.html
