Not going to upset anyone with indisputable truth I wouldn't have thought.
It might be well established now but it's a lie. Scully and Trengove were absolute standouts as one and two that year and rightly so. There was no question they were going first and second from a long way out. If anyone else was in the mix it was John Butcher who started the year as the standout player but slid as the year progressed.
The video is correct in that Dustin really only started to emerge as a high pick prospect after he had a strong under 18 championships but he was never going past those two unless they were seriously injured. And nor should he have.
I wonder whether Dusty being a working class country kid attending a local public high school had something to do with those dynamics. He wasn't part of the Private school sports factories system. So was it just a case of him not really getting the opportunity to prove himself to the recruiters until the 11th hour, because of the way the system is set up? Perhaps he was always as good (or better) than the other two, but stayed under the radar, with lack of opportunity to shine until that carnival.
Anecdotal accounts from blokes who were grown men playing with a 14-15yo Dusty at Castlemaine suggest they were aghast at how he just monstered grown men country footballers at the peak of their athletic prowess. He also had a bit of an interrupted period where he moved to Campbelltown on the outskirts of Sydney to work for his Dad. Dabbled in a bit of Rugby League, but then went and played some Aussie Rules footy in the Sydney league for Campbelltown. With the standard of club footy up there, you can only imagine how much he would have stood out. And hence the Sydney Swans were very much aware of his prowess and therefore wanted to keep it quiet. They knew he was special.
There was some technicality where they only just missed out on being able to recruit him under their local academy recruitment scheme (like they used for Isaac Heeney). Can't remember the exact technical issue they had. Think he would have needed to reside in NSW and play in Sydney for only a further month or something like that to qualify (would be interested if others can recall the exact technicality). But to our good luck, he returned to Castlemaine to play TAC cup in Victoria just in the nick of time, that he didn't fall into the Sydney Swans ring fenced recruitment pool.
There is a lot of talk from recruiters that you really need to be in the elite Private school system to give yourself every opportunity to make it. And this isn't a brand new thing. They've spoken like this for the past decade to decade and a half.
In past eras, the great thing about Australian Rules Football is that it was an 'every man's' game. There were plenty of people spread across every social class being recruited into the elite level. Sure, there were likely a lot of blokes who had come through private schoolboy footy. But it wasn't an enormous advantage or an overly necessary prerequisite. The strong grass roots club scene both in the city and the country was just as good a development tool to cut your teeth on. In fact, better in some respects, as teenage boys proving themselves against grown men demonstrated more clearly their potential to make it.
Look at the sides Essendon and Hawthorn put on the park in the 1980s. Mainly all blokes who came through strong suburban or country club footy in their powerful zones (often from working class salt of the earth clubs). Topped up with a bit of purchased talent. But the system we currently have has eviscerated salt of the earth local and district club footy, so we get forced into a situation where it's a huge advantage to you if you have the means to attend private school. Sure there are scholarships, but it's only a small subsection that get these. It means that a huge pool of talent from more modest means never gets identified, that would have in past generations.
But as a side note, I'd be interested if any of you can remember what exactly was the technicality for Dusty falling through the cracks of the ring fenced NSW recruitment pool? Putting Dusty in a side with the likes of Goodes, Kennedy and later Heeney would have been a scary prospect. In such a sliding door moment, do they nullify the latter half of Hawthorn's dominant period as well as ours never happening?
