One giant leap - Majak DawOctober 31, 2009
EUGENE Arocca recognises there is something of a poker game at play over a young man who, while clearly not the standout, is arguably the most tantalising prospect on the football world's radar ahead of next month's AFL national draft. When the hands are laid out on the table on November 26, the game could change forever.
Footy is yet to get a night grand final, but the first night draft might take the game somewhere it has never been. The possibility that an African-born player will be on a senior AFL list in 2010 — which even a few months ago was remote at best — is now very real indeed.
Majak Daw is a name Arocca has become increasingly familiar with, and North Melbourne's chief executive knows he isn't alone. In other football club offices, heads are being scratched and the same questions pondered. Should we take the punt? And — knowing the gateway to a whole new audience of players, fans and members that will come crashing open — can we afford to let someone else get in first?
"Majak is on our radar. Our recruiting people have spoken to him and about him and are fully aware of his talent — raw as it is — with plenty of upside," Arocca said this week.
The AFL's veteran guru of teen talent, Kevin Sheehan, saw enough of Daw's improvement in his second TAC Cup season with the Western Jets to rate that upside highly. "At 194 centimetres, with his speed, his leap, his natural athletic ability, and his potential size ... in a professional environment, you'd have a wonderful athlete in two years."
The Western Bulldogs see it too, recruiting manager Simon Dalrymple recalling a five-goal haul in mid-August against Murray Bushrangers as a landmark day in Daw's development. "He was outstanding, very exciting. That promoted him from being sort of on our list to, 'Gee, we've really got to monitor this kid'."
Dogs' football manager James Fantasia cautions that, with only four picks on draft night, a rookie-list berth might be a more realistic outcome. Yet come December, he might not still be around to take; Essendon, an acknowledged trailblazer in new football frontiers, also has an eye cocked in his direction.
A draft the experts rate as pretty much a stab in the dark beyond the first round of selections won't hurt Daw's chances. "It's very open, so one club's interpretation might be completely different to another's pretty much after the first 15," Dalrymple says. Arocca predicts that, this year more than ever at Arden Street, there will be as much debate over who North takes with its last pick as its first.
That AFL clubs are even having this conversation represents progress of unforeseen speed. Yet it is only commensurate with the story of the young man at its heart.
Majak Daw was born in Sudan and spent his childhood in the capital, Khartoum. After three years in Egypt, the family arrived in Melbourne in 2003. Now 18, it is just four footy seasons ago that Majak first put boot to Sherrin. He rated his early efforts to grasp the game "pathetic".
Yet he liked the sense of belonging football gave him, and soon began to feel part of the game as well as the team. Fantasia notes his humility and impressive qualities as a person, Sheehan his disciple and focus, and eagerness "to forge new ground for the African people by making the grade in the AFL".
Those who know him want only the best for him. Joey Halloran, a friend and Western Jets teammate, uploaded more than four minutes of highlights of Daw's 2009 season onto YouTube. When an internet poster scoffed that he was "overrated", a poor man's Nic Naitanui, he was howled down by a stream of responses with the same message: "I hope he comes to my club!"
Among the examples of his spring-heeled leap, deft tapwork in the ruck, surprisingly smooth kicking, contested marking and tackling sit two moments that stayed with Sheehan. Coming in a curtain-raiser to a Werribee-Geelong VFL game in front of a decent crowd at Chirnside Park, they underscored the instant following Daw would bring.
"It was against the Geelong Falcons, and he took the mark of the day and kicked the goal of the day," Sheehan said. "He's taken a grab and just about got a standing ovation, then a bit later he took two bounces and kicked a goal from outside 50.
"There were quite a few locals there, and they left no doubt who they were there to watch. They absolutely roared when he went near the ball."
Sheehan asked him to attend state screening of young footballers who were not invited to the draft camp earlier this month, and Daw was a standout. His 70-centimetre standing vertical jump would have put him third at the main camp in Canberra. In the beep test, the "mean" for tall forwards was 12.9, the best tall forward in Canberra 13.3. Daw managed 13.6.
His 20-metre sprint result of 3.03 seconds was also faster than the mean for tall forwards at the draft camp. Not actually being at the Australian Institute of Sport with the invited elite should not harm his chances; Sheehan notes that 20 players were drafted out of state screens last year, "so they do get up from there".
While the Bulldogs have a territorial tie to the Wyndham Vale teenager, and the Bombers have seen the broader benefits of drafting the AFL's first devout Muslim in Bachar Houli, North Melbourne is perhaps the most compelling fit. On Monday, November 23, the Roos will open the doors to their new Learning and Life Centre, a key plank in the Arden Street redevelopment that will have a strong multicultural focus. Three nights later, they could slip a blue-and-white-striped guernsey onto the perfect poster boy.
Arocca chooses his words carefully, and stresses romance cannot influence what must remain a football decision. "We would never use it as a stunt, we would never rookie or pick him purely because of his African background. At the end of the day, what he can do for his community will only be enhanced if he's able to play AFL football."
With his next breath, he betrays the tightrope being straddled. "Having said that, we have made a very bold and clear statement about our commitment to the multicultural community. We happen to sit in an area rich with people from different multicultural backgrounds, and we would certainly not ignore that when considering his raw talent."
His football department staff, Arocca says, need only look around the offices they work in to see how important that community is to North Melbourne, a club that covets new disciples more than most. "I defer to them," he says, "but I have absolute faith in their capacity to understand what we need, and what this club is all about."
If the Bulldogs — whose heartland the Daws adopted and whose colours the family wore when hosted by the AFL in week two of the finals — are the other most logical suitor, the draft order plays to the Kangaroos' advantage. They have six picks, while the Dogs have only four, and certainly would not use either of their first two. Come the last two, he might already be gone; North's last selection is pick 53.
The Roos are far better placed to deal with the challenge presented by someone who has much to learn. Two years ago, the club employed only one specialist development coach. This season there were two, who will be joined by a third next year. So long sniffed at for its nissen huts and conditions from a bygone age, Arden Street in 2010 will be up with the best footy schools in the business.
In an interview with The Age in 2005, AFL boss Andrew Demetriou said he had no doubt an African player would soon appear at the elite level, and tipped the history-maker would be Somalian. As North's football manager Donald McDonald says, it doesn't matter where he comes from — or for that matter which club takes the punt — the game simply needs to find more players.
"The bigger picture is it doesn't matter if it's us or the Bulldogs or the Bombers, it's just great for the game," McDonald says. "Yeah, it'd be fantastic for us to be there first, but hopefully he's got a fair few mates and he provides an example for all the other kids to say, 'Jeez, I'm going to follow in his footsteps.' "
For David Matthews, head of the AFL's game development arm, the essence of the tale is that those "other kids" draw from football the feeling Daw had four years ago — that they belong. "What's great about this story is it looks like there's going to be a talent outcome, but the reason is because he feels very much that footy's engaged him and involved him," Matthews says. "You see the friends he's developed, they're kids who in another generation wouldn't have even met a Sudanese person."
Majak Daw has had a welcome distraction from daydreams of what might be. The third-oldest of nine, he escaped home for Mackillop College this week to study, sat the first of his VCE final exams yesterday, and was happy to report he hadn't been too stressed by all that is on his plate.
He is hoping for high enough marks to study broadcast journalism, but the realisation that he could be offered a job making the news rather than covering it is starting to hit home. "I haven't found words to describe what it would mean," he says. "It would be the most wonderful thing that's happened so far."
He can see the bigger picture, the door that would be opened to other young men for whom football is as foreign as Australia once was to him. And he is comfortable with the idea of being the one who kick-starts the revolution.
"I reckon I've got a bit of a chance, but I'll wait and see. If it happens, I'm happy to be the first Sudanese to play AFL."
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