Peatling’s giant few years

By Paul Stephen

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One day he was working full time at a Christmas tree farm, the next he was on an AFL list.

James Peatling’s career path wasn’t quite like all those AFL players who get drafted from school and go straight into “the system”.

As he reached his 20s, Peatling was happy working at Leo Demasi and Lynette Macri’s Christmas tree farm in Dural in Sydney’s northwest and playing Sydney footy with Pennant Hills. However, there were unfulfilled aspirations left over from his younger years. He’d won a senior premiership as a 17-year-old alongside current GIANTS teammate Kieran Briggs for Penno in 2017 and was on the usual route – academy, NSW/ACT Allies, under 18s National Championships, reserves games for GIANTS.

It stalled when he didn’t get drafted and his AFL ambitions drifted away.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. He played for the GIANTS reserves in the NEAFL and for Pennant Hills in Sydney’s premier division and was enjoying life.

“I was happy to play with my mates, and then COVID hit. But I was pretty content to play local footy at Pennant Hills and work at the Christmas tree farm,” Peatling said. But there was a nagging feeling that an AFL career was still possible.

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An unexpected opportunity

“I was roped back in 2021 by Luke Kelly who was the GIANTS’ VFL coach. He said come down and give it another crack, no pressure to get drafted or anything, he just said he’d love to have me back playing with them,” Peatling said.

“Then I got drafted mid-season without really expecting it. It wasn’t really something I was aspiring to do. But that’s the best thing, when you’re not really expecting it, you value it a bit more,” he added.

So he had to tell Leo and Lynette that his seven years at the farm had to come to an end. He started working with them as a 13-year-old in the school holidays and did everything as he graduated to full time work, from planting, shaping, irrigation, selling and delivering trees.

“Trees I planted at 14, I was selling at 20, that was pretty cool,” he said.

“I was really fortunate to work there, I really enjoyed the outdoor work. They were a lovely Italian family and took me in as one of their own. They were really good to me and really flexible with my footy. They always said to keep going with my footy.”

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Fondness for Penno

Peatling was raised in a footy family, his father grew up in Bendigo and moved to Sydney to study and stayed, settling in Toongabbie in the city’s west.

He started playing footy at Toongabbie Primary School, making rep teams and then juniors with Westbrook, before moving at 16 to the seniors at Pennant Hills – the footy production line that has produced many AFL players.

Four years later, he played his last game for the Demons against local rivals East Coast (aka Baulkham Hills) on the Saturday and was drafted on the Wednesday, joining a long list of Penno old boys in the AFL from Terry Thripp in 1983 and Stefan Carey in the 1990s, to Lenny Hayes, Kieren and Brandon Jack, Jarrod and Mark McVeigh, Jackson Ferguson and Adam Chatfield and now Braeden Campbell, Marc Sheather and Kieran Briggs.

“It’s a bit of a footy factory. It’s a pretty footy area, not many winter sports are as strong as AFL in the area. It’s a very well-run club and they put people forward to be the best they can and that’s a big reason quite a few get picked up,” he said.

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