After months of speculation, former Bomber Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti is officially an AFL player again after returning to his former club.
Essendon announced the news on Thursday afternoon, with the club’s GM of football Josh Mahoney telling Sportsday the 29-year-old has been training for the past several weeks.
The small forward retired earlier in 2022 after failing to work his way back to full fitness and not producing his best performances in five VFL games.
But Mahoney hinted there were reasons for that, and McDonald-Tipungwuti is now ready to once again put his best foot forward.
“It’s been the culmination of a few weeks and probably months of discussions with Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti,” Mahoney explained.
“We’re excited to give him an opportunity to play AFL footy again.”
On why McDonald-Tipungwuti originally retired, Mahoney added: “Probably firstly it got to a stage in probably the middle of last season where everything was a bit too much for Walla, he had a lot of things going on personally and football was probably the last thing on his mind.
“He had some time away from the game and importantly in that time he travelled around Australia for a little bit and reconnected with some different people, through that period of time rekindled his love for the game and luckily for us, rekindled his love for the Essendon Football Club.”
Mahoney is now confident McDonald-Tipungwuti has shown the dedication to get back to the form that once made him one of the most dangerous goalsneaks in the competition.
McDonald-Tipungwuti averaged a career-high 1.7 goals per game in 2021.
“We started having some conversations about the possibility and wanted to see if he could actually start to do some training and start working and showing some real commitment, and he’s done that over the last three or four weeks,” Mahoney continued.
“He’s still got a lot of work to do, but we’re happy to announce he’s on the list lodgement we put in with the AFL today.”
McDonald-Tipungwuti has been offered a one-year contract in his new lifeline at Essendon after the AFL agreed to revoke his retirement.
He hasn’t played since Round 21, 2021, booting 34 goals from 20 games in that campaign.
While McDonald-Tipungwuti chose to return to the club he’s played 126 times for, Fremantle also went on the record in its interest in the Bomber as a 2023 pre-season supplemental selection.