00:00I think football was a priority from a very early age and I just loved playing football
00:17at school with my mates on the weekends with my neighbours and cousins and mums and uncles
00:23all played football so I grew up pretty much with football around me.
00:27It was competitive from a very early age, just always trying to take the best grab or kick
00:35the best goal against my neighbours, there was a bit of a battle going on in the neighbourhood
00:41that's for sure.
00:42We were growing up out in the northern suburbs out of Sorsby North, played with the Sorsby
00:47North Hawks and from there I moved or got selected to try out for the under-17s for Fort Magpies
00:57and so I went and did a pre-season over that summer and was lucky enough to get selected
01:03and I played on the 17s there as a 14 year old actually and yeah, it just all progressed
01:09very quickly and before I knew it I was playing league football with the Port Adela Magpies
01:15I was at 16 years of age and that same year I was lucky enough to play Till Cup as well
01:21so I played, I think, actually I played Till Cup for two years straight, the first one was
01:28in Brisbane in 1989 and the next one was in 1990 in Melbourne so I had a great time there,
01:38we played the Victorians in the Grand Final in both years so that was a good experience
01:45and later in that year in 1990 I was lucky enough to play in the SNFL Grand Final with
01:52the Maggies, we played against Cornell and it was all very exciting for me, I was only 16
01:57just turning 17 and yeah, very fortunate to play in a big one.
02:04It was a strange feeling just coming out of high school when I was quite skinny, obviously
02:12wasn't mature yet, fighting up against fully mature men who, you know, got big biceps, big
02:17shoulders, big legs so it was a little bit daunting at first but I just love football and I just
02:24went with the flow of it all and I didn't really care too much about whether I was going to
02:29get hurt or squashed or anything like that for the big boys, I sort of felt well I'm young
02:34and I've got a bit of pace on my side so I might be able to get out of trouble if they're
02:38trying to hurt me.
02:39Just thinking back, you know, I can still vividly remember Gavin's first appearance
02:45with the Magpies in senior football and I reckon we played a trial game and it was
02:53one of those pre-season matches and end of the first quarter we weren't doing all that
02:58well, you know, trial games we weren't all that serious at times and we were having a
03:04bit of a rough drop.
03:05We had a good team in 1990, you know, you had a Greg Phillips' and you had Mark Williams
03:09had come back and Bruce Abernathy had come back and there was a good group of experienced
03:13players out there and I still vividly remember quarter time in the huddle, coming into that
03:19huddle and Choco, Mark Williams, yells at everybody and says, as Mark does, that young
03:28kid is showing us what to do.
03:30And there was a young Gavin Wanganeen who was tackling people several sizes bigger than
03:37him, you know, the Greg Phillips type, tackling like a leech hanging onto them, bringing them
03:41to the ground and showing the way with the senior players with courage.
03:45Sure he had the skill but he also had that desire and from that point on young Gavin was
03:50just, it won the senior players and you saw in that grand final there that Jack was saying,
03:55the senior boys were saying to Scott Salisbury, touch him and you're dead.
03:59Well, that was the sort of respect that Gavin had gained amongst the senior players and
04:04that's the most vivid memory I've got of Gavin, the first memory I've got of him playing for us.
04:09Noel Judkins is the recruiting manager at Essendon and lucky enough to get me on tape and show
04:16Kevin Sheedy a bit of footage of myself and before I knew it I was drafted in, I think it was November
04:2289 and so I stayed obviously the next year and decided to go over the beginning of 1991.
04:31That was my first year with Essendon, that was a huge experience.
04:41When I actually...
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