Berwick footballer Stefan Martin is hoping to become a regular in Melbourne’s backline in his second AFL season. 26845 Picture: Luke PlummerBy Marc McGowan
STEFAN Martin still pinches himself on the odd occasion he has time to reflect on his achievements.
The Berwick-based junior Australian basketball star turned AFL footballer leads a life most can only dream of.
Martin, 22, played eight games in his debut season for Melbourne last year.
The 198-centimetre defender had not even kicked a football competitively before he played at amateur level for Old Haileybury in 2006.
But Martin was a hit in his new sport from the start and won the under-19 league best-and-fairest with eight best-on-ground votes from his nine games.
“I only started playing footy for fun and never had a goal to make AFL – I just wanted to muck around with my mates,” he said.
“I was getting a bit bored with basketball because I had played it for most of my life.”
Martin represented Australia in basketball in an under-20 Test series in New Zealand as a raw 17-year-old shooting guard in 2003.
But Demons officials swooped on Martin after his first football season and considered drafting him in 2007.
They ultimately overlooked him in that year’s draft and the former Haileybury College scholarship-holder instead played for Sandringham in the VFL.
Melbourne officials again invited Martin to training, but this time selected him with the number-three pick in the 2008 pre-season draft. He made his debut against Brisbane in round 14 at the MCG last June and missed only one match from then on.
Martin’s kicking, strength and fitness are still a work in progress, but he is hoping for an improved year – much like his team.
“We definitely have lots of talented players … if we work hard enough we’ll be able to win games eventually and success might come sooner than people think,” he said.
Martin is equally adept off the field – he managed a 99.75 ENTER score – and will juggle his AFL career with the fourth year of a science/law double degree at Melbourne University in 2009.
“I didn’t get much time to put towards it at all because, as a first-year player, you want to do everything right and fully concentrate on footy,” he said.
“You tend to get caught up with training every day and you don’t always get time to reflect on it.
“But if someone calls up and says ‘this is just crazy what you’re doing’, you sort of realise I hadn’t even played footy three years ago and now I’m on the MCG.”
