Brown is the quintessential late bloomer.
At 195cm, the 18-year-old is an imposing sight compared to the boy he was a year ago when the Dragons weren’t sure if he was for them.
Every year a draft bolter emerges, and the youngster flying up the ratings ahead of this year’s NAB AFL Draft could well be key forward Brown.
Brown’s TAC Cup coach certainly thinks he would be worth the punt for any AFL club, especially given his improvement this year at the time his body was struggling to catch up with his growth spurt.
“There’s a heap of upside for [AFL] clubs from the development side of it because he hasn’t done a full pre-season before. He’s just learning how to play key position and [yet] he still does it very well for the amount that he’s played there,” Molloy said.
The Mentone Grammar student played the majority of the season at centre half-forward for Sandringham in the TAC Cup, something Molloy would have laughed at a year earlier.
“He only came into our program very late because he’s actually gown a fair bit over the last year,” Molloy said.
“He’s about six-foot-three or four now, and a year ago he was probably five-foot-seven or eight, so he’s probably grown six or seven inches.
“Initially he missed a bit of the squads at Sandringham because of his height, but then we went and watched him at his school footy and then invited him back into our program and he just got better and better as the year went.”
As 2008 progressed, so too did Brown. As he got bigger, so too did the plaudits.
He impressed in the TAC Cup for Sandringham and while he didn’t do enough to win a representative jumper for Vic Metro mid-year he had AFL scouts looking.
Most recently he caught the eye of several scouts at a state screening session where those not invited to the AFL Draft Camp in Canberra were not only measured from head to toe but put through a series of tests to determine whether they might just be the next big thing.
While another Dragon in Watts and others such as Nicholas Naitanui have grabbed most of the draft headlines, Brown’s star is rising with some believing he could be a top-30 selection.
