Kieren Jack set for 100th game

Article from sydneyswans.com.au

As a teenager, Kieren Jack was told he was too small, that he took up the game too late and that he might never make it in the AFL.

Fast forward several years and Jack is set to line up for his 100th AFL match for the Swans against Essendon on Saturday night with a Club Champion award under his belt.

The son of rugby league great Garry Jack, the young Swan defied all expectations when, at age 15, he made the decision to pursue a career in AFL, rather than following his father’s footsteps.

Jack managed to get picked up on the Sydney Swans’ rookie list in 2006, but the club did not have the expectations that he would become the player he is today.

“There were a lot of doubts. Everyone thought he was too small to play AFL football and not good enough,” Swans coach John Longmire said.

“There were a lot of question marks about whether Kieren would make AFL football. It took him a number of years and he wasn’t a walk up start.

“Probably most people would have said he was very little chance of playing but the most important person was Kieren Jack, and that’s all that mattered.”

Jack arrived at the Swans through the NSW/ACT RAMS state program after playing for local club Pennant Hills, but the now 24-year-old found he was a step behind the pace when he arrived at the Swans.

Jack said the game was still a little foreign to him at the time, but he did everything he could to catch up on what he had missed growing up.

“It was a tough journey,” Jack said.

“I think I missed a lot of the fundamentals of the game of AFL as a young kid growing up.

“I was certainly a little bit disadvantaged from the Victorian and South Australian kids and I just wasn’t taught the knowledge of the game as well as they were, which I probably found out when I first got (to the Swans).

“It was all put down to hard work and I had some really good mentors and coaches that taught me along the way and I learnt from it.”

He began his career at the Swans on half-back, before taking on tagging roles to develop his game.

Jack said those roles taught him the blueprint for how elite midfielders operate on the field.

“(The areas where I was lacking) were skill things as well as patterns of the game, and the way the game was being played and the way the ball used to move, which is probably why they started me off as a tagger,” he said.

“I was still learning the game, but by being able to follow those gun midfielders around I was able to get a sense of the game and the way it was played and the patterns the players were running.

“That was something that has taken a while to get used to but it’s come down to hard work.”

With his milestone match just two days away, the 2010 Bob Skilton Medallist said he was pleased with how far he had come.

“For me it was just a dream to get on an AFL list as a Sydney-sider, and then to get there and play 100 games has certainly been a good journey along the way and I’ve certainly learnt a lot about myself and grown as a person and a player,” he said.

“I’ve been a part of a fantastic club, so hopefully there is plenty more to come and the main thing for me is getting a good win this weekend.”