Broadbeach teenager Kallen Geary is the Round 7 nomination for the NAB NEAFL Rising Star Award (Northern Conference)
2011 NAB NEAFL RISING STAR NOMINATION – ROUND 7
KALLEN GEARY– BROADBEACH
Wednesday, 18 May, 2011
Broadbeach recruit Kallen Geary boasts a very special football pedigree. And not just because he’s the younger brother of St.Kilda utility Jarryn Geary..
He shares with ex-Richmond and Western Bulldogs star Nathan Brown the distinction of being the only players to have won two TAC Cup B&F awards with the Bendigo Pioneers, having done so in 2009-10.
The person he beat for this award in his second year in the elite U18 competition was none other than boom Richmond youngster Dustin Martin.
He smashed the 3km time trial record at the NAB AFL Draft Camp in Canberra in 2009 with a time of 9min43sec.
And, according to officials wherever he’s played, he is a natural leader and an outstanding young man.
Little wonder there is a collective disbelief in football circles that Geary was overlooked in the NAB AFL National Draft not just in 2009 but also last year, when the Gold Coast Suns took the cream of the talent crop.
But Geary’s ill fortune has been Broadbeach’s good fortune.
The 19-year-old midfielder has been named in the Cats’ top five players in five of their six games this season. And he’s not just been making up the numbers in the top six as nominated by the coaching staff – in their last three games against Morningside, Redland and Labrador he was second-best after starting the season with a fifth and a fourth in his first two games.
So impressive has he been that he’s won the Round 7 nomination for the NAB NEAFL Rising Star Award (Northern Conference).
And he’s considered a huge chance of winning a spot in the Queensland squad for the 18 June interstate clash with Western Australia in Perth, to be named after Round 8 fixtures this weekend.
Broadbeach Club Development Manager Jarrod Field could not be more glowing in his praise of the former Eaglehawk junior, who played last with with Sandringham in the VFL, finishing runner-up by a solitary vote in the club’s Reserves B&F and winning ‘Best Finals Player’.
“He’s been absolutely exceptional in every regard,” said Field, the former Labrador coach. “He does everything right in terms of his own football, and even though he’s new to the club he’s a really positive influence on others.
“He’s here before the start of the Reserves every week and gets around the group, helping out in any way he can. We couldn’t ask any more of him. He’s a gun.”
There was a touch of good fortune in the Cats’ capture of the 2009 Victorian Country U18 representative, who was described in pre-draft reports after the national championships that year as “a hard-working midfielder with sound skills on either side of his body, strong endurance and good ability to win the contested ball”.
Geary, who would have been hot property in the VFL, only headed to Queensland because his girlfriend Bridgette was heading to the Gold Coast to study at Bond University.
When Cats Director of Football Geoff Bower rang him to arrange a meeting in the hope of going to Melbourne to meet with him about joing the club he found him to already be on the Gold Coast.
Geary and his partner had made a two-day trip to the tourist strip to visit the university and check out possible accommodation, so the Cats got the jump on any possible opposition.
Then, when Bower set himself to meet Geary in Melbourne in the hope of finalising the deal, he found an extraordinary coincidence on his side again.
“I was going to visit my God daughter after she had a baby and I thought I’d combine the two things,” Bower explained. “I was staying out at Lyndhurst which is about an hour from Melbourne so I figured I was in for a bit of a drive. Where do think he lived? In the house next door to my God daughter.”
Geary, nicknamed ‘Gearz’ or ‘Gearbox’ and set to turn 20 on 30 May, is a newcomer to a fairly small group of interstate recruits nominated for the QAFL / NEAFL Rising Star Award.
He joins NT Thunder’s Jed Anderson and Ross Tangatalum, Aspley’s Michael Hutchinson, Mt.Gravatt’s Nathan Reid, the Brisbane Lions’ Richard Newell and Redland’s Trent Manzone as early contenders for the coveted award.
His Rising Star nomination completes a family double – his brother,a 2008 AFL pre-season premiership team member at St.Kilda who played 19 senior games last year before being an emergency throughout the finals campaign, was nominated for the equaivalent AFL award in 2009.
The person he beat for this award in his second year in the elite U18 competition was none other than boom Richmond youngster Dustin Martin.
He smashed the 3km time trial record at the NAB AFL Draft Camp in Canberra in 2009 with a time of 9min43sec.
And, according to officials wherever he’s played, he is a natural leader and an outstanding young man.
Little wonder there is a collective disbelief in football circles that Geary was overlooked in the NAB AFL National Draft not just in 2009 but also last year, when the Gold Coast Suns took the cream of the talent crop.
But Geary’s ill fortune has been Broadbeach’s good fortune.
The 19-year-old midfielder has been named in the Cats’ top five players in five of their six games this season. And he’s not just been making up the numbers in the top six as nominated by the coaching staff – in their last three games against Morningside, Redland and Labrador he was second-best after starting the season with a fifth and a fourth in his first two games.
So impressive has he been that he’s won the Round 7 nomination for the NAB NEAFL Rising Star Award (Northern Conference).
And he’s considered a huge chance of winning a spot in the Queensland squad for the 18 June interstate clash with Western Australia in Perth, to be named after Round 8 fixtures this weekend.
Broadbeach Club Development Manager Jarrod Field could not be more glowing in his praise of the former Eaglehawk junior, who played last with with Sandringham in the VFL, finishing runner-up by a solitary vote in the club’s Reserves B&F and winning ‘Best Finals Player’.
“He’s been absolutely exceptional in every regard,” said Field, the former Labrador coach. “He does everything right in terms of his own football, and even though he’s new to the club he’s a really positive influence on others.
“He’s here before the start of the Reserves every week and gets around the group, helping out in any way he can. We couldn’t ask any more of him. He’s a gun.”
There was a touch of good fortune in the Cats’ capture of the 2009 Victorian Country U18 representative, who was described in pre-draft reports after the national championships that year as “a hard-working midfielder with sound skills on either side of his body, strong endurance and good ability to win the contested ball”.
Geary, who would have been hot property in the VFL, only headed to Queensland because his girlfriend Bridgette was heading to the Gold Coast to study at Bond University.
When Cats Director of Football Geoff Bower rang him to arrange a meeting in the hope of going to Melbourne to meet with him about joing the club he found him to already be on the Gold Coast.
Geary and his partner had made a two-day trip to the tourist strip to visit the university and check out possible accommodation, so the Cats got the jump on any possible opposition.
Then, when Bower set himself to meet Geary in Melbourne in the hope of finalising the deal, he found an extraordinary coincidence on his side again.
“I was going to visit my God daughter after she had a baby and I thought I’d combine the two things,” Bower explained. “I was staying out at Lyndhurst which is about an hour from Melbourne so I figured I was in for a bit of a drive. Where do think he lived? In the house next door to my God daughter.”
Geary, nicknamed ‘Gearz’ or ‘Gearbox’ and set to turn 20 on 30 May, is a newcomer to a fairly small group of interstate recruits nominated for the QAFL / NEAFL Rising Star Award.
He joins NT Thunder’s Jed Anderson and Ross Tangatalum, Aspley’s Michael Hutchinson, Mt.Gravatt’s Nathan Reid, the Brisbane Lions’ Richard Newell and Redland’s Trent Manzone as early contenders for the coveted award.
His Rising Star nomination completes a family double – his brother,a 2008 AFL pre-season premiership team member at St.Kilda who played 19 senior games last year before being an emergency throughout the finals campaign, was nominated for the equaivalent AFL award in 2009.
