THERE is a bit of dinosaur in Brad Ottens and it has nothing to do with the fact he is a physical presence on the field, or he plays as an old-fashioned tap ruckman who enjoys the occasional rest up forward.
By his own admission, Ottens is from another era, an era when AFL clubs were just starting to embrace the concept of full-time professional players, coaches and support staff.
You have to wind the clock back to 1998 and Ottens, then a gangly 199cm and 92kg teenager from South Australia, was in his first season with Richmond. He’d landed at Punt Road without the fanfare a No. 2 draft pick might expect today, probably because the draft was still something of a mystery to those not ensconced in the industry.
But he had been identified by Richmond as a serious talent and, after the Tigers worked a trade to gain the No. 2 selection, officials couldn’t read his name out quickly enough once Melbourne took Travis Johnstone with the No. 1 pick.
There was some good pedigree in the young colt. His father Dean (or ‘Deano’ as Ottens call him) was a star ruckman for Sturt in the SANFL, playing in three premierships, and it didn’t hurt that older brother Luke was selected in the same draft by Melbourne with pick No. 50. Luke managed just four games in two seasons on the Demons’ list.
Ottens had already been playing senior football in the SANFL with Glenelg in 1997 and his path through the national under-16 and under-18 championships had recruiters of the day pencilling his name in as a high draft pick.
They didn’t get it wrong either, but his journey shows just how much Ottens - and the game - has changed.
Together with a handful of veterans such as Essendon’s Dustin Fletcher, the Bulldogs’ Barry Hall, Geelong teammate Darren Milburn and North Melbourne captain Brent Harvey, Ottens is probably one of the last players to train under lights.
He remembers vividly training with Richmond’s reserves on chilly Friday nights at Punt Road. “I was playing in the twos and we used to train after the seniors on a Friday night. You’d look over at the ’G and the lights would be on and hundreds of people would be walking past on their way to the footy.”
It was also an era when not all players were fully professional. “We had a lot of guys who would rock up to training after work,” Ottens said. “It was a different culture. The professionalism of footy these days is streets ahead. It was all about club functions back then, there was nowhere near the media scrutiny and there were certainly no social networks like Twitter and Facebook.”
Read the full story in the round seven edition of the AFL Record, available at all grounds.
