Claremont Football Club in Perth has a long, proud history of producing AFL talent. Hall of Famers, Brownlow Medallists, Team of the Century selections, All-Australians, Norm Smith Medallists, premiership players, captains, club champions, coaches, #1 draft picks and Rising Star winners.
There’s even a current AFL Commissioner, a club CEO, one of only two players to win the AFL Goal of the Year and Mark of the Year in the same year, a member of the Italian Team of the Century, and the only five-club player of the modern AFL era. Plus the Gold Coast SUNS first coach, Guy McKenna, and a member of the SUNS first team, Nathan Krakouer.
They are the Tigers of the WAFL, wear navy blue and gold and sing a slightly adjusted version of the Richmond theme song.
And on Saturday they will add to this illustrious list the SUNS’ 23rd 100-game player when Wil Powell posts his century against the GWS Giants at the Sydney Showgrounds.
It will be a major milestone for a player who in his draft year of 2017 was shunned by the West Australian Under-18 selectors and ignored in the AFL Phantom Draft. He arrived at the club at 67kg looking more like a jockey than an AFL footballer and describing himself as a “class clown” and two years ago suffered an horrific ankle injury.
He was described as “a shock pick” and a “bolter” when taken by the SUNS at pick #19 in a 2017 AFL National Draft overloaded with West Australian talent. Even Claremont, when posting a list of possible draftees ahead of the draft, excluded him.
Admitting he was “immature” when he made the trek from west to east to follow his football dream, he was homesick in his first year and battled to settle in. Had his entire family – parents Scott and Sharyn, two sisters and three dogs - not driven across the Nullabor to relocate to the coast it might have been different.
But now seven years on at 24, a partner to Bailee and father to son Theo, born in February this year, Powell is a fixture in the SUNS defence, one of the most skilful and courageous players at the club, and a developing leader.
It’s ironic the wiry 185cm dasher will play his 100th game in the western suburbs of Sydney because it was where the 2017 Draft was held on Friday 24 November. Everyone who is anyone in football was there … except Powell.
He was at home in Perth sitting on a secret which provides an insight into the cloak and dagger nature of the draft.
The SUNS recruiting team had been the first to visit the Scarborough junior product who was playing with the Claremont Colts at the time, and left with a parting message.
"I got told to keep it all 'hush hush'. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, only my family. Nobody else could know. So I didn’t tell anyone, I had to keep it secret from other clubs if they asked I'd had any meetings with anyone else," Powell recounted later.
"I met with Melbourne, who told me the same thing to keep it 'hush hush'. I also spoke to Port Adelaide, Freo, Richmond, Carlton and Collingwood.”
It was all a bit of a surprise to Powell after he’d been ignored by West Coast champion Peter Sumich, who in 2017 coached a WA Under 18 side that included four All-Australian Under 18 picks – co-captains Oscar Allen and Aaron Naughton, Sam Taylor and Brayden Ainsworth.
"I didn't expect to have one chat to an AFL club because I was only a little wiry skinny kid just playing my role and not doing anything out of the blue to get recognised. When I had my first chat it was like 'wow'."
Yet in the draft, when no less than 20 West Australians were given a ticket to the AFL, Powell upstaged all but two of them. Naughton went #9 to the Western Bulldogs, and Brandon Starcevich went #18 to Brisbane before Powell with the last pick in the first round.
The WA talent that followed was enormous. Allen, winner of the Larke Medal as the best player at the 2017 Under-18 championships and now co-captain at West Coast, went at #21, and was followed by Tim Kelly (Geelong, now West Coast) at #24, Liam Ryan (West Coast) at #26 and Taylor (GWS) at #28.
Ainsworth went to West Coast at #32 ahead of Zac Langdon (GWS) at #56, Jake Patmore (Port Adelaide) at #58, Kyron Hayden (North Melbourne) at #62, Ben Miller (Richmond) at #63, Scott Jones (Fremantle) at #75 and Matt Guelfi (Essendon) at #76 before Jarrod Garlett, a first-round pick to the Gold Coast in 2014 who played 17 games in 2015-16, was given a second chance by Carlton at #78.
In the rookie draft, Bailey Banfield (Fremantle) was pick #5 and was followed by Ryan Burrows (West Coast) at #13, Liam Baker (Richmond) at #18, Gordon Narrier (North) at #20 and Callan England (West Coast) at #35.
Langdon, Patmore, Guelfi, Banfield and England were all teammates of Powell at Claremont.
The 2017 Draft Report Card says Kelly (138), Naughton (136), Baker (124), Starcevich (109), Guelfi (107), Taylor (104) and Ryan (100) have beaten Powell to 100, while Banfield (92) and Allen (87) will do so, and Miller (40) is playing regularly this year at Richmond.
But Ainsworth (15 games), Langdon (56), Hayden (17), Jones (6) and Garlett (13 more games) are out of the AFL system with Patmore, Burrows, Narrier and England, who did not play a game.
Ironically, Charlie Ballard, taken in the same draft from SANFL club Sturt at #42, has played 95 of Powell’s 99 games – more than any other teammate. David Swallow (93), Jack Lukosius (84), Touk Miller (83) and Ben Ainsworth (80) are next on that list.
In total, 56 of 106 first-time draftees in 2017 have only memories to remind them of what might have been as Powell, still with a big ‘upside’, as recruiters would say, continues to prove a smart choice by the SUNS.
He debuted in Round 15 2018 the week after Tom Lynch suffered a knee injury in what would be his last game for the club. First-year coach Stuart Dew made four changes after a 53-point loss to Hawthorn in Launceston – Brayden Crossley, Steven May, Rory Thompson and Powell in for the injured Lynch and Sam Day, Cal AhChee (personal reasons) and Jack Leslie (omitted).
It was all meant to be a surprise but a well-intended intervention from then housemate Peter Wright gave things up. "I was out the front about to wash my car and I got a call from Stuey," Powell said. "The conversation started off relatively normal, then I saw Pete creeping around the corner with his phone filming me and the lightbulb went off."
There was no soft introduction for the then 18-year-old, who had inherited the #27 jumper worn previously by Michael Coad, Clay Cameron and Ben Ainsworth, who had switched to #9. His debut was against fourth-placed Collingwood who were fresh off a bye.
Powell remembers it well, as he later told Melbourne radio SEN. “I was lining up at half-forward and I wandered down there. Then Scotty Pendlebury comes and lines up against me straight away on the half-back line. I looked at him and was in awe.
“I said, ‘Bloody hell, I looked at this bloke … when I was 15, 16 when I was playing footy, I want to be like you’. To see him in the flesh, it was pretty amazing.
“Funny story, when I lined up on him he looked at me. I didn’t say a word because I was very raw and very skinny. He grabbed my arm and he goes, ‘S--t, you’re skinny’. I just looked at him and couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. I didn’t know whether to be sad or to be happy.”
His career was only nine minutes old when he received a handpass from fellow Claremont junior Jack Martin and snapped truly across his body from 25m on his left to join the AFL ‘first kick, first goal’ club.
It was a group which already included Charlie Dixon (2011), Joey Daye (2011), Josh Glenn (2015), Keegan Brooksby (2015), Jacob Heron and (2018), and has since added Chris Burgess (2019), Izak Rankine (2020) Jy Farrer (2020), Hewago Oea (2022) and Elijah Hollands (2022).
Collingwood won by 39 points due primarily to a second quarter in which they added 6-3 to 1-2, with the Brownlow Medal votes going to Brodie Grundy (23 possessions, 49 hit-outs), Queenslander and coodabeen-SUN Josh Thomas (22 possessions, four goals) and Taylor Adams (30 possessions). Powell had 10 possessions and a goal.
Since then Powell missed 25 games through an assortment of injuries – ankle (12), knee (8), hamstring (3) and concussion (2) – but so highly is he rated that after nine Reserves games in his first season Powell has not played again at the secondary level.
There have been injuries in the Powell journey … and the injury. A moment in his 69th game against Adelaide at PFS in Round 14 2022 which followers of all clubs remember cringingly.
"I didn't feel pain at the start, I just looked at it and was in shock. My ankle was facing the wrong way and then about 10 or 15 seconds after it happened the pain set in, just excruciating, all the way up my leg. It almost didn't feel real how sore it was. I was lucky enough the doctors came over with the green whistle pretty quick and that subdued everything," Powell said later.
"I had (physiotherapist) Lindsay (Bull) on my thigh and (club doctor) Barry (Rigby) on my ankle pretty much playing tug-of-war with my foot and leg trying to put the ankle back into the socket and they couldn't do it. It was still dislocated in the ambulance. The fibula was pointing too far to the right and it was trapping the ankle."
Well remembered is a picture of Powell taken in the hospital emergency ward where, still wearing his SUNS jumper, he offered a reassuring ‘thumbs up’ to concerned SUNS fans before surgery, eight weeks in a moonboot and the lonely rehabilitation that followed.
It’s all in the past, now, as Powell, who will beat fellow Claremont juniors Jake Waterman (98), , Jordan Clark (95), Banfield (91) and Allen (87) to 100 AFL games, looks forward to enjoying a well-deserved dividend on the hard yards he did in his early years with the club.
And the Claremont history lesson? It’s dominated by Brownlow Medallists Graham Moss (1976), Nathan Fyfe (2015-19) and Tom Mitchell (2018), and AFL Hall of Famers of Moss, Ken Hunter and McKenna. Full details are:-
AFL Hall of Famers: Ken Hunter, Guy McKenna, Graham Moss.
Brownlow Medallists: Nathan Fyfe (2), Tom Mitchell, Graham Moss.
Norm Smith medallists: Andrew Embley.
Club Team of the Century: Ken Hunter (Carl), Peter Pianto (Geel)
All-Australians: Ben Allan (2), Bruce Duperouzel, Chad Fletcher, Nathan Fyfe (3), Michael Gardiner, Ken Hunter (2), Heritier Lumumba, Eric Mackenzie (2), Steve Malaxos (2), Jeremy McGovern (4), Ashley McIntosh, Guy McKenna (3), Paul Medhurst, Michael Mitchell (2), Tom Mitchell (2), Bruce Monteath, Peter Pianto, Beau Waters.
Premiership Players: Ben Allan, Tom Barrass, Darcy Cameron, Joel Hamling, Brett Jones, Rowan Jones, Chris Lewis (2), Heritier Lumumba, Ashley McIntosh (2), Guy McKenna (2), Tom Mitchell, Mitch Morton, Don Pyke (2), Alan Toovey, Ryan Turnbull.
AFL 200-Gamers: Ben Allan, Matt de Boer, Andrew Embley, Tony Evans (2), Nat Fyfe, Chris Lewis, Heritier Lumumba, Ashley McIntosh, Guy McKenna, Tom Mitchell.
AFL 100-Gamers: John Annear, Ben Allan, Tom Barrass, Travis Colyer, Tony Evans, Michael Gardiner, Matt Guelfi, Jesse Hogan, Kingsley Hunter, Brett Jones, Rowan Jones, Dale Kickett, Darren Kowal, Peter Mann, Jack Martin, Jeremy McGovern, Mitch McGovern, Paul Medhurst, Alistair Nicholson, Jason Norrish, Sam Petrevski-Seton, Don Pyke, Danny Southern, Alan Toovey, Ryan Turnbull, Marley Williams.
AFL Rising Star: Jesse Hogan
AFL Club Captains: Ben Allan, Steve Malaxos, Eric Mackenzie, Peter Mann, Guy McKenna, Nat Fyfe, Graham Moss,
Club Best & Fairests: Ben Allan, Tom Barrass, Nathan Fyfe (3), Ken Hunter, Dale Kickett, Chris Lewis, Eric Mackenzie, Steve Malaxos, Peter Mann, Ashley McIntosh, Guy McKenna (2), Tom Mitchell (3), Graham Moss (3), Jason Norrish, Peter Pianto, Don Pyke, Ryan Turnbull.
AFL Coaches: Guy McKenna, Gerard Neesham, Don Pyke
#1 Draft Picks: Michael Gardiner, John Hutton, Clive Waterhouse.
AFL Rising Star: Jesse Hogan.
And the more random Claremont products?
Matt DeBoer played 223 games with Fremantle and GWS, and was added to the AFL Commission in September 2023.
Don Pyke played 132 games with West Coast, was a premiership player in 1992-94 and club champion in 1993. He coached Adelaide from 2016-19 and was appointed West Coast CEO in November 2023. Also, he was the first AFL player born in the US. His father Frank, who played with Perth in the WAFL, was living in Bloomington, Illinois, with wife Janet and teaching at Illinois State University when Pyke was born in December 1968.
Michael Mitchell, who played 81 games with Richmond from 1987-91, was All-Australian in 1985-86 while playing at Claremont and won the AFL Mark/Goal of the Year double in 1990. Carlton’s Peter Bosustow did likewise in 1981.
Peter Pianto played 121 games with Geelong from 1951-57, and was a premiership player in 1951-52. He won the Geelong B&F in 1953, was All-Australian in 1956, named in the forward pocket in the Geelong Team of the Century, and, being of Italian heritage, was named in 2007 in the Italian Team of the Century
And Dale Kickett is the only player in the modern to play with five clubs, splitting his 181 AFL games between Fitzroy (15), West Coast (2), St.Kilda (21), Essendon (8) and Fremantle (135) between 1990-2002. This was after Les Abbott played for Collingwood, Carlton, Richmond, Melbourne and South Melbourne between 1904-12, and Les Hughson played with Collingwood, Hawthorn, Carlton St.Kilda and Fitzroy between 1927-37.
