Seventeen-year-old Kane Tenace is a medium-sized midfielder whose outstanding assets are his blistering pace and ball skills. He’s a high possession winner, won the Murray Bushrangers’ best-and-fairest award in 2003 and was an All-Australian player in the U18s this year after representing Vic Country.

At the National Draft Camp, Tenace - who lives and attended school in Shepparton - placed in the top 10 per cent for the 20 metre sprint. He is expected to be drafted in the top ten at next Saturday’s National AFL Draft.
Tenace will speak to afl.com.au in the lead-up to the draft. Happy to have completed his VCE exams, he shares his latest thoughts with Samantha Lane.


Tuesday, 18 November 2003
I didn’t do much over the weekend, I’ve just been catching up with friends and went for a run on Saturday.

I haven’t been doing a whole lot of fitness work lately, especially during exams. I’m going to start getting into that now, probably go for a run pretty much every day this week and get out and have a kick. I haven’t got a program as such, I’m pretty much doing my own thing.

Today I was planning on doing a five-kilometre run and do a few shorter sprints. I do it alone. Ryley’s (Bushrangers teammate and fellow draftee Ryley Dunn) had surgery yesterday on his finger, so he’s not really in the position to join me.

Geelong called me on Saturday and they’re going to come and see me tomorrow night, but that’s all at the moment. I spoke to most clubs at the draft camp, there were only two or three that I didn’t chat with.

It’s probably getting more difficult to shut out thoughts about the draft because it’s in the paper every day now. But I try not to think about it as much as possible. It’s funny seeing the television and news reports. I suppose you can’t take too much of what the papers say too seriously, because it’s pretty hard to know what the recruiting managers are going to do. It’s all a bit of a guessing game.

You go through in your head a little bit what might happen in the draft and which club might pick up which players, but it really is very hard to tell. You don’t know what the clubs are looking for and it’s too hard to work out. I’m trying not to worry about it.

I’ve been speaking to my manager every now and again. I might call him or he’ll give me a ring. It’s good because I suppose you get a little bit of an idea of what’s going on.

I’ve decided not to go to the draft on Saturday. I got a call this morning from the manager of the Murray Bushrangers asking me if I’d like to go along, because they were going to invite me. But I’d just rather stay home with my family I think.