Grassroots Footy Lands Two Cult Heroes for 2027 — Lucky Them
Every now and again a bit of news comes through that makes you put down your coffee and genuinely smile, and this is one of them — a former Saint and a bloke who turned out for both the Tigers and the Roos are heading to local football for 2027, between them hauling 204 games of AFL experience down to whatever windswept oval will have them. Good on them. Honestly. After the week I’ve had following this club, I needed something nice to write about that didn’t involve a free kick count.
I won’t pretend I know every last detail of who’s going where — the sort of specifics that get ironed out at a windy clubrooms meeting over a counter meal — but the gist is clear enough. Two credentialled AFL names, one with Saints heritage and the other a genuine Tigers-Roos cult figure, are trading the MCG car park for a servo pie and a changeroom that still smells like Dencorub from 1987. It’s the circle of footy life, and it’s one of the better parts of our game.
The cult hero economy is thriving
If you’ve followed suburban and country footy for any length of time you’ll know this isn’t some one-off — it’s basically an industry now. Every off-season there’s a trickle of ex-AFL names landing at clubs two or three tiers below where they used to play, and the locals treat it like Christmas came early. Memberships spike. The social media graphic gets made within about four minutes of the announcement. Somebody’s uncle who
