Emma Quayle is an award-winning journalist and draft expert who spent 16 years covering AFL for The Age newspaper before joining the GIANTS’ recruiting team in February, 2017. As one of the industry’s most respected writers and talent spotters, Quayle has a unique perspective on the GIANTS’ recent crop of draftees. In the third of her insightful six-part series, Quayle sits down with Zone Selection Rookie, Jack Buckley.
Jack Buckley didn’t spend too much time feeling disappointed, when he missed out in the national draft last November. It was impossible to feel too bad, because the night had been such a good one. One of his good friends, Andrew Brayshaw, had been drafted by Fremantle at pick two. Another, Charlie Spargo, had been picked up by Melbourne in the second round. A third, Andrew’s brother Hamish, had been given a chance by West Coast having been overlooked by every club 12 months earlier. “I was so happy for him, and so happy for all of them,” Buckley said. “It was a really good night, a really exciting night. I wasn’t feeling bad for myself at all.”
Then the phone rang. On the other end was Adrian Caruso, the GIANTS’ recruiting manager, asking Buckley if he would like to sign on with the club ahead of the rookie draft, as a prelisted local player given he had grown up in Sydney. Buckley knew the offer was probably coming, but didn’t expect it so soon. “I remember just sitting there. I have no idea what I said to Adrian, I don’t think I could really even talk,” he said. “I just dropped the phone, I went to tell my dad and we sat there in the kitchen together for a while, talking about it and thinking ‘here we are.’ So it was weird. I didn’t get to have my name called out at the draft, but I still had that little moment.”
It wasn’t one Buckley grew up thinking he would want, let alone reach. He moved to Sydney when he was seven and a few years after that joined the Swans Academy. But when he turned 16, he wasn’t enjoying training and didn’t feel like he was going anywhere. He had friends who were far more advanced and no confidence that he could catch or go past them. He loved basketball, which he played at school, and while he kept playing club football he decided to drop out of the academy. “I just didn’t feel like I was getting very far,” he said. “I thought, ‘if I’m not very good and I’m not enjoying it either, then what am I doing here?”
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Those thoughts changed this year. Buckley moved from his under-19 team into the senior side at UNSW-Eastern Suburbs Bulldogs, and found himself looking forward to every single preseason session. He was promoted to the squad after winning the league best and fairest in 2016, an award that came as complete surprise and wasn’t enough to trigger any thoughts of one day being drafted. Jack’s friends playing TAC Cup football in Melbourne were so much further advanced than him that it still didn’t seem possible, no matter how well he was going. And even though he knew more than most kids about what AFL clubs are like: his father Ben, a former North Melbourne vice-captain, is now the club chairman.
“It was so foreign to me, that idea of being picked up, but then I started training with the senior team and I just fell in love with football again. I looked forward to training and I couldn’t wait to train,” Jack said. “I thought I was playing with the senior side because that’s just the next thing you did in Sydney, but a few games into the season something really started to change.
“I wasn’t sure how I was going to go against the bigger bodies, but I started to get to more contests and I started to just think a lot more about what I was doing. I always felt like I could mark the ball and find it on a lead, but I wasn’t focused enough in a game to do it constantly. I had a really good coach who encouraged me all the time and I found myself starting to go to my dad a bit more as well. He’d always stayed removed from my footy, but I said to him ‘can you help me out? I really want to get better.’ A few games in I thought, ‘I should start taking this as seriously as I can.”
He did, though falling back in love with football helped Buckley deal with other things that were going on in his life in a way he never really had, too. He was just a little boy when he lost his mother to cancer and realised early last season that he had shut away most of his feelings about her death, and never really talked it through with anyone. He started to, seeking out some help and feeling grateful for his club and coach, who told him to take all the time he needed. “I dealt with it and worked through it all. I came good and actually felt really good about taking the time to deal with it because I never really had,” Buckley said. “It was so good to get my head around everything and work out how I felt. I was only six when my mum died so it’s kind of a blur, but you piece together certain memories and during that time I let it all bubble up and put it all together, just let myself accept it and come to terms with it.
“I had some really good people in my corner and in the end, dealing with it was a positive experience. It’s just been such a huge year, such a big year in my life in so many ways. To deal with everything was a challenge and something that needed to happen, but at the same time football became a good escape and something that was pushing me and driving me, as well. It’s crazy how it’s happened, and footy really helped. I made a commitment to give it everything I could possibly give it and it drove me to places I never thought I’d get to. I really liked building up that commitment and working out what I had to do. I really liked the feeling that gave me.”
It got him to one of those places very quickly. Buckley’s coach, Steven Pollack, was coached by Brett Hand, the GIANTS’ Head of Development and Welfare, at Norwood in Adelaide once upon a time and they had stayed in touch since. The last thing Pollack wanted was to push up players who weren’t ready, but by early last season he had seen Buckley do enough good things to think he was capable of jumping up to NEAFL level and possibly going even further.
He got in touch with Hand, who helped arrange for Buckley to come in and play as a top-up player. Jack had no idea what it would ask of him, how he would go and whether he would be accepted into the team, “but it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.” He played one game, then another and then one more, holding his spot until his five-game quota as a local top-up was filled. He played one last NEAFL game after that, this time for the Sydney reserves, and Essendon also had him in to do some testing. But right from the start he felt like part of the GIANTS, like the coaches wanted him to do more than make up the numbers.
His ambition was stirred. So much so that going back to the Bulldogs presented a whole new challenge; Buckley was no longer guessing about where he wanted to get, he knew he wanted to make it back to the GIANTS and felt confident he could get there. “It was such an unexpected thing to happen for me, and I went through so many different feelings. I remember feeling nervous the first time I went to the club, not knowing how it would be, to running around in circles in my first game not picking up the ball movement, to starting to feel more comfortable and feeling a connection with the club. They’d mention my name in team meetings and they treated me like I was one of them and like I had a real part to play,” Buckley said.
“I went back to my local club wanting to pay them back for everything they’d done for me, but it was frustrating for sure. My attitude wasn’t right, and I didn’t play that well. It was the first time my coach had to say to me ‘you can do better than this,’ and I thought to myself, ‘he’s right.’ It kind of taught me how to respond well and how important it is to put in the same sort of effort and leave everything out there no matter where you are and what level you’re at. He’s the one who helped get me to the GIANTS and then when I came back he helped remind me to use all the things that I’d learned.
“That conversation got me going again, and just reminded me how you can’t wait for anything to happen, you’ve got to go and do it. I didn’t think I was ready for the NEAFL when I got here, but everything is here for you to use, all you have to do is make sure you use it, be professional and be intense. I was so fresh and I tried not to expect too much out of it, but in the end I couldn’t help it and to eventually get a win and walk off after the game feeling like I’d actually contributed, it was such a good feeling. It was, ‘OK, I really need to keep going now, and take the next step.’ The one thing I knew by the end of it was that I really didn’t want to leave. So to be back here now and actually be another player on the list, it’s the best feeling in the world. I want to make the most of it.”
