Barker boy leads the Suns

This article first appeared on the NSW Australian Football History Society’s website. Check out the site for more great stories and facts about our game in NSW.

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Rugby’s loss is definitely footy’s gain.

And it didn’t take footy long to snare Jarrod Witts away from the game they allegedly play in heaven. Four games in fact was all it took for the then 15-year-old Sydney schoolboy to be signed by Collingwood and rewrite his dreams from being a Wallaby to an AFL player.

Witts has become one of the AFL’s elite ruckmen, and it all started when Swans great Rod Carter spotted him at an under 16s game for powerhouse junior club St Ives on Sydney’s north shore in 2007.

“I don’t think he was there to see me, our team had a couple of guys who were pretty handy,” Witts said.

Carter was there in his role as Collingwood’s junior development man in Sydney in the days when the Magpies had a relationship with the Sydney University footy club. Carter was playing coach of the great Sydney Uni side which won the 1992 Sydney premiership (on September 13 – the day Witts was born) and was now in the dual role as the uni’s under 19s coach and Collingwood’s rep.

He quickly saw something in Witts in only his fourth game of Aussie Rules.

“He was 6’6” and 15 years old and playing rugby at school in Barker’s first XV. By the end of the warm up I was on the phone to Derek Hine (Collingwood’s recruiting boss). I said forget the other kids this is the bloke we need to get before someone else does,” Carter told former Swans teammate Neil Cordy a couple of years ago.

Hine signed him the next day on a Collingwood scholarship and Carter brought him to Sydney Uni to play in their u19s with other Magpie scholars (now, that’s a phrase you don’t often hear). Witts was drafted by the Pies in 2011 and made his AFL debut in 2013 in the ruck against St Kilda and Big Boy Ben McEvoy.

“He had some choice words for me. It was one of those ‘welcome to the AFL’ moments you don’t forget,” Witts remembers.

He was traded in 2016 to the Gold Coast where he has blossomed and is closing in on 150 AFL games.

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But how did a boy from rugby stronghold Barker College end up playing Aussie Rules?

Witts grew up in Normanhurst near the Hornsby school and had played rugby in the second row throughout school, including some time with the First XV while in Year 10.

“My best mates played AFL for St Ives, so I played just to spend more time with them on the weekends,” he said.

“I played rugby for school on Saturday and AFL for St Ives on Sunday.

“I’d always loved AFL, always went to the SCG with my grandfather and father to watch the Swans for years.

“I guess I had rugby aspirations, all teenage boys playing at a rugby school did, the Wallabies was the dream. Was I good enough? Probably not, I don’t know.

“But I was probably more suited to AFL. In the second row you don’t really kick it that much or run with the ball. AFL has a more unique skills base and that’s what appealed to me. The game suited me better.

“And I could see a pathway to the elite level.

“The school was disappointed I chose AFL.”

But he had an insider helping him at Barker. The school’s then sports master Matt Macoustra played under Carter at Sydney Uni and signed off Witts’ exemption from college rugby to allow him to focus on Aussie Rules.

He’s delighted to see how far footy has come at Sydney schools like Barker.

“A friend sent me a photo recently of goal posts on number one oval! It’s amazing to think AFL has progressed that far in Sydney, especially among the private schools,” he said.

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