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I remember the first time I saw this bloke play, I think it might have been his debut for Subi. I was in the can bar on the eastern wing of the Showgrounds. He kicked four I think and took about four marks of the week and Subi killed us. Me and my mate agreed that this bloke was clearly a top ten draft pick. He went on to kick 70 odd I think that year and... wasn’t drafted. Mind boggling.
Played a blinder for the Eagles in a really gutsy win over the Saints tonight and his synergy with Kelly tonight was very reminiscent of the Krackouer brothers years ago.

Ryan and Kelly (aka The Krakouer brothers mkII) are just a couple of the very many guns taken as mature aged players out of the mighty WAFL TOO!

Agreed BH ...and as a Subi man I think my club has done well in giving mature age guys a chance when you consider Callum Sinclair, Sam Menegola, Liam Ryan, Zac Clarke, Josh Deluca, Liam Baker all being successful at the elite level to varying degrees.

Not bad for a competition a few of the Ammo posters on here have called irrelevant BC!

At SD we have had mature aged draftees the likes of Dennis Armfield, Luke Miles, Andrew Krakouer, Wayde Twomey, Charlie Cameron, Nathan Broad, Ryan Davis, Ethan Hughes, Rory Lobb etc ourselves off the top of my head in the last dozen or so years and that is along with about 30-40 18yo's over that same time period of which most had played some League footy at SD first, not too mention Marcus Adams who started at SD before being drafted from WP at 23.

It took the AFL clubs a few decades to figure out that recruiting 18yo athletes and trying to turn them into football players wasn't the only way to go. There was always quality players in WA & SA in that 20 - 25 age group, hardened grown men who know the game and could easily step straight into an AFL system, cope with intense fulltime training and make a great contribution. Hard to go past Tom kelly as the best mature age recruit, his game last night was superb, knowing we had lost 4 key mids, he just stepped up to another level along with Ryan who was also terrific all night. Thankfully when the Saints made their move, Nic nat stepped up a level and gave our mids first use for the last half of the last qtr. Barrass did a great job covering the loss of McGovern who we wont see until the finals, thankfully there is the general pre-finals bye which will give him an extra week to recover.