‘You’re joking’: Why pick 57 was the tearjerker moment of this year’s AFLW draft

There was plenty of emotion at Monday’s AFLW draft, but the 57th pick of the night was the biggest tearjerker of the lot.

It was right towards the end of the player market that Hawthorn took a punt on Maya Dear, the daughter of the late Paul Dear, who won the Norm Smith Medal for the Hawks in their 1991 premiership win.

A video released by the Hawks on Tuesday morning showed the touching moment when Maya’s younger brother Calsher – a key forward for Hawthorn’s men’s team – surprised his sister with the news she would be joining him at the “family club”.

The family gathered for a photo to mark Calsher inheriting his dad’s No.13 guernsey, only for a Hawks’ AFLW guernsey to also be introduced to the photo shoot.

“Do you want to play for Hawthorn?,” Calsher asked his sister.

“You’re joking … I was not expecting that,” she replied, as mum Cherie squealed with delight.

Maya’s surprise, in part, stemmed from her limited football pedigree. Despite her lineage, the athletic 21-year-old’s sporting background is more in netball and, particularly, basketball, where she most recently played NBL1 for the Sandringham Sabres.

Paul Dear played 123 games for the Hawks in the 1980s and 90s, many alongside his brother, ruckman Greg Dear. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2022, and the Hawks now play an annual Dare to Hope game in his honour to raise money for a charity he and Cherie founded of the same name.

Coincidentally, the next player chosen after Maya Dear on Monday night also went to a club where her father is an esteemed premiership hero.

The Brisbane Lions used pick 59 to recruit Meg Lappin, the daughter of Nigel, a key figure in their flag three-peat of 2001-03 and a member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Raised in Geelong, where her dad has been a long-time lieutenant to Cats men’s coach Chris Scott, Meg was the second Lappin taken in Monday night’s draft.

Talented Queensland teenager Sunny Lappin could have gone to Carlton or St Kilda – where her dad Matthew (Nigel’s cousin) played – but opted for Gold Coast, who nurtured her as a footballer in their academy.

She went with pick No.4, and was one of eight players selected by the Suns from their academy, six of them going inside the first 15 selections of the night.

The first pick of the draft was used by Richmond on West Australian key forward Olivia Wolmarans.

Athletic midfielder Scarlett Johnson had been in the mix for the Tigers’ pick as late as Sunday, while Chloe Bown, who slipped to Adelaide’s pick No.5, was favourite for most of the year.

Then Richmond, who are without a coach after sacking Ryan Ferguson following a 16th-placed finish, settled on Wolmarans late.

“Unreal. I can’t tell you the feeling I’m feeling right now,” Wolmarans said.

The 18-year-old said she’d gone 10-pin bowling to avoid thinking about the draft on the day, shunning her mother’s suggestion of heading to an art gallery.

“It (being No.1) means the world to me, but right now I’m on a list and so I’m back on zero,” she said.

Wolmarans is the first No.1 pick from WA.

“I’m very proud of myself, and hopefully I can be inspiration to the other girls in WA that this is possible, and that they can do it,” she said.

Richmond had traded with Gold Coast to ensure first dibs on the best talent ahead of GWS’s picks No.2 and No.3. The Giants then snapped up Johnson.

“At the end of the day I just wanted to end up on an AFLW list - it didn’t matter if it was pick one,” Johnson said.

GWS then successfully bid on Sydney academy prospect Kiera Yerbury with the third selection.

Yerbury found out on Monday afternoon that Sydney wouldn’t match the bid, but she’s excited to join their cross-town rivals.

“I kind of had an idea that if things happened, they might not fall the way I expected,” she said.

“But at the end of the day I’m just stoked to be a Giant.”

A power key forward with a booming kick and huge contested mark, 180cm-tall Wolmarans had a background in heptathlon before turning to football.

She will likely be a foil to veteran Katie Brennan in the Tigers’ attack as she develops.

The Suns traded pick No.1 to help them add as many top selections as possible to match bids on highly-rated academy prospects including Sunny Lappin, Georja Davies, Ava Usher, Dekota Baron and Alannah Welsh.

Lappin, who could have been a father-daughter selection to either Carlton or St Kilda, where her father Matthew played, was the first Suns academy cab off the rank, with Gold Coast matching Adelaide’s bid at pick No.4.

Three Suns academy selections were taken in the top 10 while Sydney snapped up Alex Neyland at pick No.6 after overlooking Yerbury.

Pick No.9 Georja Davies followed older sisters Giselle (Sydney), Fleur (GWS) and Darcie (Gold Coast) onto an AFLW list after the Suns matched Essendon’s bid.

Two years after she was the Western Bulldogs’ No.1 pick, Kristie-Lee Weston-Turner slid to North Melbourne’s pick No.37, days after North and the Dogs were unable to agree on a trade.

The reigning premiers also drafted Irishwoman Sarah Wall, sister of two-time premiership Kangaroo Vikki Wall, with pick No.53.
with AAP

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