You could understand the excitement of Essendon fans throughout the country when star GWS on-baller Dylan Shiel announced his preferred football destination on the second day of the AFL trade period.
This is a potential recruiting coup the likes of which the Bombers have rarely seen. Brendon Goddard aside, Shiel would arguably be the most highly-rated arrival on to an Essendon list since South Australian star Greg Anderson landed at the club 30 years ago.
If the midfield has proved something of an achilles heel for Essendon in the modern era, surely it could be regarded as such no more.
That might even have been the case before Shiel’s announcement such was the extent of the improvement in that area over the last two-thirds of 2018. But consider for a moment the potential 2019 midfield rotation.
It reads: Shiel, Devon Smith, Dyson Heppell, Zach Merrett, David Zaharakis, Darcy Parish, Kyle Langford and David Myers. Then throw in just a sample of potential midfield burst players in Jake Stringer, Andy McGrath and Orazio Fantasia.
That’s some serious talent. Some serious depth. And Shiel’s addition to their number could make Essendon a serious September player next season.
Shiel’s bona fides as one of the elite midfielders in the competition are established over seven seasons and 135 games with GWS, making him the most experienced of the Giants’ one-club players.
He won All-Australian selection in 2017 with a superb season in which he not only averaged more than 26 disposals but was ranked second in the competition behind only Brownlow medallist Patrick Dangerfield for clearances and, significantly, second behind only last year’s Brownlow winner Dustin Martin for centre bounce clearances.
Shiel is quick on the inside, and a smooth mover also good on the outside. But perhaps his greatest trait is his sheer consistency.
In seven seasons with the Giants, Shiel has finished top 10 in the best and fairest in the past six. And in the last 71 games he’s played (spanning the past three seasons) he has compiled fewer than 20 possessions just three times, one of them the 2017 preliminary final in which he was injured early and took no further part.
Shiel will step straight into Essendon’s midfield not, as was even the case with Devon Smith this year, a player looking for more minutes on the ball, but one who has played his whole AFL career there. Indeed, Shiel’s entire football pedigree is hard to fault.
A top-flight junior, Shiel was a star for Victoria even at under-12 level, where in 2005 he played alongside Smith and future Giants teammates in Adam Tomlinson, Jonathon Patton and Dom Tyson.
He was one of the very first players signed by the Giants as a 17-year-old, and shifted to Sydney straight after completing his VCE at Caulfield Grammar in 2010. His school coach, former Hawthorn and Richmond player Barry Rowlings, saw comparisons to another former Grammarian in Chris Judd even then.
“Everything ‘Juddy’ does, Dylan tries, too,” Rowlings told Age journalist Emma Quayle back then.
“He's a real professional, even at his age. He’s always out on the oval kicking, marking and handballing, and nothing phases him. He trains hard, he works hard and he always wants to train harder. The AFL system won't shock him.”
It certainly didn’t. And like his fellow GWS “pioneers”, that was despite his early AFL surrounds not necessarily proving the stuff of boyhood dreams, none the least starting out at a club back then still officially to be given even an official name or colours.
The GWS headquarters in those early days were at Rooty Hill RSL, where Shiel, still 17, not only had to grab a ride from teammates to attend, but get special permission even to get in the licensed premises.
“We were a level above the gaming room,” he recalled in an interview with the Giants’ website this year, “and every day at 11am, they had a minute’s silence.
“No matter what we were doing, whether it was the middle of an intense meeting or a weights session or something, (coach) Kevin Sheedy would make sure we dropped everything, stood up and waited.”
Away from family and friends, still not legally an adult, Shiel had to grow up quickly. On the field, too, where those early GWS teams were (sometimes literally) punching bags for far more seasoned opponents, winning a total of just three games in their first two seasons.
“It was really challenging to keep rocking up every day to the footy club and still have that belief that it’s going to turn and I’m still a good player,” Shiel said.
“You discover AFL football is pretty bloody hard. In my first year, I tagged three or four Brownlow medallists and got towelled up every time. They threw us in the deep end, but they had to, that was the only way.”
It was an induction that has more than paid off. And at 25, still with many years left ahead, both Shiel and Essendon can now cash in.
He’s been swayed by the meetings he’s had with the players, the promise of team success and the opportunity to play consistently in front of big crowds. And with Shiel on board, who is to say even a crowd of six figures on the last day of the season is out of the question?
