If you could fill a bottle with courage, toughness, determination & the willingness to just want to play & help your mates and club out, that bottle would be labelled with the title “Brody Southall”.
On Saturday when we take to the field in the high country against South Belgrave, that bottle will be on full display when Brody, or as he is better known ‘Sticks’ finally gets to play his 50th Senior game with his beloved Saints wearing No.1, the number he’s carried from the junior club. When I say finally, this young man has had a few injuries that have robbed him of a few games, so it is fantastic to see him reach his first club milestone.
As is the case with most young boys growing up in the heartland of AFL, Brody watched a lot of AFL with his Dad and as a Hawks supporter, Brody was the perfect age to see them break a 17 year Premiership drought in 2008 and being the correct age to join Auskick the following year he couldn’t wait to start kicking the footy around.
Living a Buddy Franklin drop punt from McAdam Square, Brody’s Dad took him down to the Auskick clinic behind McAdam Square the following year to begin his football career. With this clinic not being a feeder to a junior club, players often just located themselves to a few different clubs when their time at Auskick finished. Lucky for us that Brody’s Dad liked to socialise with the other Dads, so when it came time to take the next step and play Juniors, they found themselves at North Ringwood where the other Dads had already signed their boys up to play.
So with the 2011 season upon us Brody found himself playing U9’s with a few mates from Auskick, hoping that one day he could be just like his heroes Cyril Rioli, who Brody loved to watch weave around players and make look stupid and also like many young Hawks supporters at the time, the mighty Buddy Franklin and as Brody says, “Buddy is just Buddy”, you can’t argue with that.
Brody loved his time at NRJFC and why wouldn’t he as it was a successful 9 years down at North Ringwood Reserve.
By the time Brody finished in U17’s in 2019, apart from making lifelong friends, Sticks finished with 111 Junior Games & also collected along the way:
2015: EFNL U13B Premiership
2015: NRJFC 50 Games Medal
2016: NRJFC U14 – Most Improved
2017: EFNL U15 Premiership
2018: NRJFC 100 Games Medal
2019: U17 Rewarded with NRJFC Life Membership
Finally in the pre-season of 2019-2020, Brody made his way down to Quambee with his U17 mates to train with the U19’s. Brody’s move to the Senior club was seamless, with 50 & 100 Junior Game medals plus the honour of just being named a Junior Life Member, going to another club was never considered.
Unfortunately for the boys as we all know, this was short lived with the 2020 season cancelled due to Covid. Fast forward 12 months and a year stolen from their Senior development, Sticks and his mates were back on the track with the U19’s for pre-season and finally in April of season ‘21 the boys played their first game with the 19’s but only got a third of the way through before being cancelled again.
With the U19’s going to 19.5 in age, this allowed the young boys another crack in the Colts but Sticks had already started to show he was up to playing senior footy with his toughness & speed. Brody only played 3 more games in the Colts, finishing the season with 17 games in the Reserves.
Throughout his time at the senior club, Sticks played as a small forward. Unfortunately for Brody, he was thrown into the backline after halftime in the Reserves last game of the year against Wantirna South due to a couple of on ground injuries. With only a few minutes to go, Brody was involved in an incident that left him with a broken collarbone in 3 places.
It was also his 21st birthday 4 days later and he wasn’t able to celebrate in style with his mates, being in a world of pain while waiting for surgery.
No-one expected to see Brody back playing until deep in the season this year, but Brody worked his arse off to get himself ready for footy again. Not only did Brody come back early and played Rd 6 this year, he hit the contest just as he had done in the past before his serve injury and it was just like nothing had even happen in his last game.
Pretty easy to get an idea of what a tough young man he is for his size but to get a full picture of what this young man is like, he also attended training sessions and did not miss a game while on the sidelines and even stuck his hand up to be Todd’s game day Runner to help his team out and stay involved. This is what you call a dead set true clubman and why I referred to the label on the bottle at the start
I asked Brody what his time has been like since coming down to the Seniors and he replied, “I have definitely loved my time at NRFC. The culture is unreal. All the boys from the 19’s, Reserves & Seniors all get along like a house on fire and it is a really great environment to be in. I still have a good bunch of mates down here from my junior days playing in both the ressies & the seniors and it’s just a good time to be involved in the club”.
Every time we have a players milestone game, they always mention the culture and environment. From a member’s point of view this is brilliant to hear. We might not exactly be where we want to be right now but with a young & full list of players who are all mates, we are not far off being there.
In last week’s game against Montrose Brody played a ripper, being named in the best and is primed to rip it apart in his 50th to help get the boys over the line and hopefully taste finals action for the first time in a while.
Congratulation Brody on your first NRFC Milestone but can pretty much guarantee it will be the first of many.
Have a great game champ from all of your mates down at the Saints
