WA teens leap into the limelight
Seven West Australians have joined 15-year-old counterparts from all over Australia for the trip of a lifetime to South Africa for aspiring AFL players.
The 25-strong School Sport Australian team left Perth for Johannesburg on Tuesday after raising $6000 per player for the tour, which includes three matches against South African AFL academies and several AFL supported Footy Wild coaching clinics in black townships.
The youngsters, who formed the bulk of the All-Australian team from last year's schoolboy championships, will pit their skills against 19-year-olds in their games against academies which are sponsored by Collingwood, Fremantle and West Coast as part of the AFL's push into South Africa.
Team coach Ray Barrett, from Lockridge High School, said the team included some of the best young talent in Australia, nominating Victorian Tom Lamb and West Australians Clem Smith, from Wesley College, Jermaine Miller- Lewis, from Yule Brook College, and Woodvale's Connor Wilkinson as players to watch.
Other West Australians in the team are Melville's Jarrod Pickett, Mazenod College's Brayden Manuel, Warwick's Cody Grace and Brendan Tingey, from Comet Bay.
Geraldton star Jack Martin set the schoolboy titles alight in 2010, winning the MVP and putting himself on the radar of AFL clubs.
But Barrett said Smith, a diminutive jack-in-the-box who nearly matched Eagle Nic Naitanui's 2008 draft camp standing leap of 78cm in testing in Perth earlier in the week, was one of the most exciting youngsters he had seen.
"Jack Martin excites people now but in terms of doing the extraordinary, Clem is more exciting," Barrett said.
"He is only a short guy but he has got a hell of a leap. He is a real athlete and could play anything."
Fremantle's Tendai Mzungu and West Coast's Jack Darling outlined their respective paths into the AFL to the teenagers before the trip.
