MAKE that 18 consecutive winners and counting.
Sam Davidson has maintained a longstanding VFL streak by becoming the latest recipient of the Fothergill-Round-Mitchell Medal to land in the AFL, after the Western Bulldogs selected the athletic forward with pick No.51 on Thursday night.
The 22-year-old has a football resume that reads like a country gun for hire, but his short stints at Sale City in the North Gippsland Football League, South Mildura in the Sunraysia Football League and Maffra in the Gippsland League weren't because he was chasing envelopes brimming with cash around country Victoria.
Davidson has been studying medicine at Monash University – he is at the business end of his fifth year – and undertaken rural placements across 2022 and 2023, only emerging on the radars of recruiters in 2024 because of his academic focus.
The 191cm forward reached out to Richmond to undergo a pre-season over last summer through a Steve Morris contact and earned a game by round three, before winning the VFL's best young player award after bolting from nowhere across winter.
Richmond VFL operations manager and AFL recruiter Oliver Grant watched vision of Davidson over the pre-season before he was offered a contract and has been blown away by his astronomical rise from anonymity to the AFL.
"It is just great recognition of the program and the people in it. Ultimately, it's all him and we are so proud of him," Grant told AFL.com.au on Thursday night.
"We've built an environment that has enabled him to thrive. He is talented, has the ability to run and athletic traits that have got him to this position, so all the credit must go to him. But how it makes me feel is enormous pride for the VFL program. I'm just so rapt for him."
Richmond's VFL program has produced a bounty of AFL players in recent years, including Mykelti Lefau, James Trezise, Tylar Young and Jake Aarts, while Sam Durham and Massimo D'Ambrosio also had stints at Punt Road.
Davidson kicked 26 goals in 17 appearances in his first season at state league level, sharing the VFL club best and fairest after putting his name on the radar of more than a handful of clubs, including Essendon which was tempted to pull the trigger in the Mid-Season Rookie Draft before opting for Saad El-Hawli instead.
The VFL young gun award was introduced in 1989 and has become a glittering accolade with every winner being drafted since Jason Davenport was picked by Geelong in 2006.
Davidson will need to put his medical degree on hold now that he is entering a full-time football environment, but the plan has been to study a PhD part-time in 2025.
