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 and takes you inside the thinking of the recruiting team. In the second of her insightful six-part series, Quayle sits down with selection 61, Connor Idun.
When Connor Idun woke up on day two of the draft, he didn’t want to talk. To anyone. At all, if he could help it. He hadn’t expected to hear his name called on the opening night, so to sit, watch and wait for the first round to unfold had not felt overly stressful. But if his chance was to come, it was going to be anywhere from the second round onwards. One club had texted him to wish him good luck, and to Connor that felt like a ‘thanks but no thanks.’ The handful of others that had spoken to him, including us, had picks scattered right through to the end of the draft and academy players to match bids for, so he had no idea what would happen. And there was one other possibility: that he didn’t get picked up at all.
“I was so nervous. I got one hour’s sleep the night before, if I was lucky,” said Connor. “I didn’t invite anybody over, just in case it didn’t happen. And I didn’t speak to my family for the whole day. Even when we were sitting in the living room waiting for it to start, I sat there in silence and didn’t really say a single word.
“I was playing with a footy in my hands, watching the TV. I was just locked in, thinking about all of it. I didn’t want to listen to everyone talking and asking me ‘who’s that player, who’s that club picked?’ so I sort of warned them the night before that I didn’t want to talk, that they shouldn’t try to get too much out of me.
“I remember sitting there wondering what was going to happen. I didn’t know. But I sort of had a hope that it would be the GIANTS. Then it was, ‘it’s probably going to be the GIANTS or no-one.’ That’s the way I was thinking. So I was just waiting for our picks.”
Everything's bigger up close. To become a GIANTS 2019 member today, CLICK HERE.
We’ll never know if he was right. But he was right to think we wanted him. To bring Connor in, though, wasn’t as simple as waiting to see if he would slip to our last selection. In fact, if not for the introduction of live pick trading in last year’s draft he probably would have ended up being chosen by another club before we had the chance to do anything about it, or having to wait another few hours for the rookie draft.
We had followed Connor all year, and in 2017 as well. We loved his competiveness, and the fact he would play anywhere and do anything for his team. As a 17-year-old in 2017 he had asked his coach at the Geelong Falcons to let him play against Cameron Rayner, straight out of the national championships Rayner had starred in. “I saw him kicking five goals every week so I just thought, ‘let me play on him, give me a chance,” Connor said. “It was a bit of a selfish act maybe, but out of all our defenders I trusted myself to stick on him all day because that’s what I pride myself on. I had nothing to lose. I just went for it, and it turned out all right. I hadn’t really proven myself until that time and after I played OK in that game it gave me a lot of confidence. It was good fun to play on him.”
Connor was anything but selfish last year. When he was asked to play in the forward line he went there, crashed packs and created contests. At other times he was thrown into the ruck, to get things going with a big tackle, two or three. Playing down back for the Falcons and Vic Country he again requested the big jobs: Ben King and Jack Lukosius, who both ended up being picked in the top six.
“It was a bit of a nightmare taking those two on back to back, but I love doing that sort of stuff,” he said. “I watched a lot of vision, got on YouTube and that sort of thing. And then with the coaches I went through a fair bit of stuff. It was a bit of a challenge but I wanted to do it and I just want to do whatever I can for the team.
“If they want me to play on the wing, I’ll play on the wing. If they want me on the bench, I guess I’ll take a seat on the bench. If it’s all going well and good I play my best footy down back, but if they want to move you to a different position you’re obviously impacting the game well, and they want you to keep going. My coaches gave me so much confidence and had faith in me, so I just wanted to get the job done.”
There were things he still had to work on, like every kid in the draft, but the way we looked at it, big, competitive players with power can be tough to find. Connor checked out as a good kid off-field too: emphatic, organised, caring, and a talker, someone his coaches relied on to make sure their message was getting through to the rest of the group. Our problem was working out a way we could get him.
We weren’t taking a rookie pick. We had traded up to pick 24 to get Bobby Hill, and after matching West Coast’s bid for Kieren Briggs our next pick was way out in the late 80s. We knew Connor had only spoken to seven or eight clubs, but looking at where those clubs were picking, we didn’t think he would make it that far.
So, from the early 40s, we started calling almost every club when they were on the clock, or just before: Richmond, Sydney, Geelong, Essendon and others. Meanwhile, we crossed our fingers that no-one would call Connor’s name and beat us to him. A few clubs said no straight away. Others waited to see whether the player they wanted was still there for them, then knocked us back. Some said no, but to call back when their turn came around again. Connor was the only player we wanted, so had someone else picked him we would have packed up and been done.
Eventually, St Kilda traded with us, swapping pick 61 for two 2019 fourth rounders. With that, we were able to pick Connor. Finally. And in doing so, end what had become an even more agonising wait for him, sitting in silence on the couch at home in Drysdale. Before long he was in the car with his mum Fiona and step-father Matt, driving into Docklands for dinner with the recruiting team.
EMMA QUALYE WRITES: Tough love from Shane Mumford motivates Kieran Briggs
He actually had a link to the GIANTS before we picked him. Connor was born in England and spent his first four years in Essex. His biological father is a Scotland Yard detective (he also has an older half-brother who coaches soccer in Mexico) but his stepfather Matt, who Fiona met after moving back to Sydney, grew up near Mark and Jarrad McVeigh and went to the same school as our backline coach, who’ll be looking after Connor.
By the time we saw him, he was relieved. “It was crazy, I still can’t get over it, really. How it all just worked out like that,” he said. “I had my fingers crossed, but once Briggsy got bid on, I thought that was that. I was hoping for the other clubs I’d spoken to, but it got to pick 55 and I sort of put my head down and zoned out.
“I thought the GIANTS were done, but then thankfully I saw that trade come through and my heart rate lifted. I was praying to the TV, I was thinking ‘please let it be me.’ And then to hear my name called out, it was awesome, My family went off. I just sat back and there were a few tears, I’m not going to lie. I was shocked at first, and then I was just happy. I’m pretty lucky that the trading came in this year, but now that I’m here, I feel like everyone else. I just want to get into it.”
