By RUSSELL BENNETT
FROM the moment Sydney’s recruiting and list strategy manager Kinnear Beatson called Bunyip prodigy Tom Papley at 9.30 last Friday morning and said the Swans would take him in the AFL Rookie Draft if he was still available, it’s fair to say he was useless on the job site.
By smoko soon after 11am, the third-year apprentice plumber saw that he’d slipped past Essendon and Collingwood – who’d both interviewed him – and Tom knew he was on the way to the club both of his grandfathers played for.
His dad’s father, Max, played 59 games for South Melbourne and was named club champion in 1966 while his mum Susie’s dad, the late Jeff Bray, also played 34 games for the club after a distinguished career at West Adelaide.
“I got phone calls for the next three hours so I didn’t really do much for the rest of the day!” Tom said with a smile, back at the Bunyip footy ground with dad Dave and Max for one last time on Sunday before jetting off to Sydney to begin his new life in the red and white.
Tom admits it probably took until Sunday for it to sink in that the team with such a deep connection to his family had selected him with pick 14 in the Rookie Draft.
But the 19-year-old small forward had shown plenty since being moved from the midfield into an attacking role by the Gippsland Power.
He interviewed with the Magpies and then the Bombers in the lead-up to the draft, before sitting down with the Swans at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre a couple of weeks ago.
“It was short and sweet – for 25, 30 minutes – but I felt pretty confident,” he said.
“They asked me what I thought they needed and I said I was a Sydney supporter and that I thought they needed a small forward.
“(Swans coach) John Longmire was the first person to call me on Friday and he welcomed me aboard. He said: “I heard you spoke to the boys and said we needed a small forward?
“I was a bit star-struck on the phone so I don’t know how I’m going to go when I see him!”
Tom was only 16 when he won a senior premiership with Bunyip, and on Friday many of his former team mates either called, or went around to his house to congratulate him.
“It was pretty special to win a flag with those boys,” he said with a smile.
“I’ll always remember that.”
But now the aim of the game for Tom is a simple one.
“It’s my first year as a rookie so I just want to build my way up and do all the right things,” he said.
“I’ve got to start again and work harder than I’ve ever worked before.”
Max is just as excited about the opportunity ahead of Tom.
“I’m stoked,” he said with a beaming grin.
“It’s a real reward for effort, and besides we looked up the NEAFL fixture yesterday and they go to Darwin, the Gold Coast and Brisbane so there’s a real excuse this year coming for why we might be able to get away a bit more!”
Dave then chimed in: “I’m very proud. I did teach him everything he knows!
“But, seriously, when I was playing he used to hang around the goals – from end to end – and he even did the water in the fifths, the fourths and the thirds.”
But Tom could have been lost to footy altogether – instead pursuing cricket. He was even supposed to go to the West Indies with the schoolboy side when he was 17.
Yet after a change of heart, and returning to footy, Dave and Max – or ‘Pap’ as Tom affectionately calls him – convinced him to give the Power a crack for his under-18 year.
“I started off pretty slow – I didn’t do much,” he said.
“But I got changed to a role up forward in about round eight and that’s where it started.”
Since then he’s shone, lining up on Geelong superstar Jimmy Bartel – even if only for five minutes – for Casey at VFL level, and most recently booting five of the Power’s seven goals in his last TAC Cup game – an elimination final loss to eventual premiers, the Oakleigh Chargers.
Tom follows in the footsteps of Ben and Michael Ross – also Max’s grandsons – and Shane Mumford as recent Bunyip draftees.
