On Monday night, 13 footballers received a fresh opportunity to play League football courtesy of the mid-season draft, reintroduced by the AFL this year after a 26-year hiatus.
The new draftees would have been inspired along the way not to have given up on the AFL dreams. Perhaps it was the story of Collingwood’s Brody Mihocek that helped keep their dreams alive.
In the space of nine months in 2018, he went from a good VFL career with Port Melbourne and a “cruisy” logistics job at a nearby timber business to playing in a Grand Final and almost winning a flag. The dream of playing in the AFL never disappeared despite missing out at numerous drafts going back to 2011 when he was coming off a good display for Tasmania in the 2011 NAB AFL National Championships.
Among his teammates were Jimmy Webster, Ben Brown, Robbie Fox, Jesse Lonergan, Jackson Thurlow and Henry Schade.
After being overlooked at that year’s national draft and the rookie draft that followed, Mihocek wasn’t disheartened but instead began charting the course that would finally end with him becoming an integral part of the Collingwood forward line.
Twelve months with the Burnie Dockers, 12 more with Maribynong Park, two years with Werribee and finally, two years with Port Melbourne was the pathway he took that ended with his selection by the Magpies at the 2018 rookie draft.
Throughout his time at Port Melbourne, he was comporting himself as if he was an AFL footballer. VFL football is a hard slog as it is, what with three nights of training for about 40 weeks of the year tacked on to a full-time job for most players.
But Mihocek undertook extra strength and conditioning work on top of that. And he became a keen student of the game by watching a lot of AFL footy. When the Pies finally called out his name with the 22nd pick at the Rookie Draft 12 months later, he was ready.
“I did tear up a bit,” Mihocek recalled in this week’s AFL Record. “All the emotions came up, but then I got straight into it.”
In the feature story, he also discusses what he has brought to the Magpies in his one year as a regular senior player, while recruiter Dom Milesi and forwards coach Brenton Sanderson also discuss what they identified with Mihocek and what they are so taken with him.
The round 11 edition of the AFL Record is available at all grounds this weekend for just $5.
The special edition for the Shanghai game between St Kilda and Port Adelaide is available at the ground free of charge.
