It’s fair to say the Gold Coast Suns didn’t do the best job putting their inaugural playing list together in the lead up to and during the 2010 National Draft.
Of the players they drafted in 2010, David Swallow, Josh Caddy, Dion Prestia and Tom Lynch ended up working out, but only Swallow remains at the club.
Unfortunately for them, they had a future club captain right under their noses and even invited him to train with them, but ultimately didn’t even give him a courtesy call.
That player was Gold Coast native and current Brisbane skipper Dayne Zorko.
“One day my new manager Peter Blucher told me that there was a Gold Coast AFL team coming in,” Zorko wrote in the Herald Sun.
“He said there would be a lot of young talent at the club and if I didn’t want to move away this was my best chance to get on an AFL list.
“From there I got asked to train with the Suns along with Ryan Holman for about a week or two.
“They needed some older bodies because they had all these 18-year-olds, so I went and trained with them and never got a phone call back.
“That was disappointing, but little did I know my dream was about to materialise.”
Gold Coast would actually end up signing Zorko the following year … and immediately on-trade him to Brisbane as part of a three-way trade involving Melbourne.
The Suns received pick 34 and Demons defender Matthew Warnock and the Lions got the future four-time best and fairest winner and pick 47.
“In 2011, I went to Western Australia and played well in a state game for Queensland,” Zorko wrote.
“Luckily, a Lions recruiter was there to watch someone else, but after that I got a phone call.
“I was living in Gold Coast’s draft zone, so Brisbane asked the Suns to put me on their list so I could be on-traded to them.
“It was a few years later than I had hoped, but I was finally on an AFL list.”
Zorko has now played 168 games for the Lions, kicking 184 goals and making the 2017 All-Australian team.