Scopus one week, AFL the next: Jewish footy player about to kick his biggest goal

ASHLEY BROWNE meets Harry Sheezel, the Scopus student who has become the first Jewish player to be drafted into the AFL in a generation.

Harry Sheezel walked out of his final VCE exam last week feeling the same jubilation but none of the anxiety of his fellow Year 12 classmates at Mount Scopus College.

The rest of the cohort will be sweating come the morning of December 12, when the results ping on their phones. How well they go could well shape the rest of their lives.

But not for Sheezel. His career path is already set in stone. In less than a week from now, he will become an AFL footballer and with the potential to become a great one.

The AFL’s national draft takes place over a couple of nights next week. But Sheezel won’t take long to discover his fate. He is set to be among the first four players selected. Almost universally, it is predicted he will be selected by North Melbourne, which is great news for his close-knit family who would prefer that he stay in Victoria rather than be drafted to one of the eight clubs located in different parts of Australia.

He is no “flight risk”, as the football commentariat refers to drafted players who return to their home state as soon as they can, but in an interview this week with The Jewish Independent, Sheezel says he was honest when he met with the non-Victorian clubs.

“I know what it's like here in Melbourne, whereas if I go interstate, I could love it (or) I could hate it. So I can't give them a definitive answer, I just don't know,” he says. “I'm pretty good at building relationships and I think if I get to a club, I'll work my butt off to do as much as I can for that club. So I think it wouldn't be an issue; just maybe missing family would probably be hard.”

The 18-year-old’s star has soared throughout 2022. He was not touted as a first-round draft pick at the start of the year but had a fabulous season for his Under-18 club, the Sandringham Dragons, and at state representative level. Within the space of six days last September, he played in the national Under-18 championship winning team for Vic Metro (the abundance of talent means Victoria is split into two) and the NAB League premiership for the Dragons.

He impressed in both those games, as he did all year, as a crafty, 184-cm medium forward who kicks goals out of seemingly nothing, while performing all the team-oriented tasks that coaches love. He took care of himself, was rarely injured and fulfilled his goal of aiming to improve each week, while ignoring the noise that grew with every good performance. “Try to do as much as you can and then it will all work out,” was his operating mantra.

Sheezel is the pride of the AJAX Junior Football Club, having spent his entire career at the Jewish club before joining the Dragons to make his way through the AFL talent program. But unlike many emerging footballers, including several from AJAX, he knocked back the opportunity to attend one of the prestigious Associated Public Schools, whose elite sporting facilities and specialist coaching would have helped fast-tracked his development.

He was tempted to move to Scotch College in Year 10, but that was 2020, the year Covid took hold, meaning he would have played no football, nor had any chance to make new friends in the classroom.

Mount Scopus College is hardly a sporting hotbed, but the school was accommodating in every way, from school principal Rabbi James Kennard down, allowing him a reduced subject load so he could train and prepare fully for football. Sheezel was the most popular kid in school, with stories abounding of football-obsessed kids following him through the corridors, pleading with him to play for their favourite teams.

That he made to the AFL while remaining at a Jewish school and learning the game at a Maccabi-affiliated club is something that the community should cherish in the coming years.

Sheezel has made many sacrifices, with more to come. In between studies and football, there was time for little else apart from sleeping, eating well and recovery. He eschewed the parties and barely had a drink.

And in a few weeks’ time, pretty much the entire Mount Scopus Year 12 class will finally travel together to Israel for the long-awaited trip to compensate for the Year 10 Ulpan trip that never happened because of the pandemic. Sheezel won’t join them.

“Yeah, it's definitely disappointing,” he says. “It would obviously be incredible to go to Israel with your mates post school. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. But if I had a choice, I'd still choose to stay here. I think it's a no brainer for me.”

Sheezel will be the first Jewish player to be drafted since Carlton selected Jeremy Dukes in 1999. Dukes never played a senior game, whereas Sheezel is a big chance to play his first AFL game as soon as round one, which will be in the middle of March.

He would become the 11^th halachic Jew to play League football, and you can go back to the inaugural year of what was then the Victorian Football League in 1897 to find the first - Bert Rapiport - who played three games for Fitzroy. There have also been several other players past and present with Jewish fathers. One of them is 295-game North Melbourne ruckman Todd Goldstein, who might become his teammate next week.

Sheezel gets asked about his Jewish background regularly and while every AFL player has a community of sorts, he talks glowingly of his own, which he knows will ardently follow his every move. He is about to become one of the most recognisable Jewish Australians. He also understands that like it or not, he will be seen as a role model and a representative of the entire community. “It's probably different in the Jewish community. Everyone’s that bit closer,” he says.

Those who know Sheezel well say he is a football tragic. As early as five years of age, when he started at Auskick, it was clear he was especially talented. He was always the best player in his age group. “I think it comes pretty natural to me. I'm pretty disciplined and I'm obsessed with getting better at footy. I just always think about it.”

Any slight doubts he might have had about pursuing football as a career were put to be bed when he spent a week embedded with St Kilda earlier in the year. He was immersed in every aspect of the team – training, gym sessions, sports science and team meetings - and it was everything he thought it would be. “It’s what I always dreamed about. And to live it for a week was incredible.”

He spent a few days after his last exam taking part in high-performance immersion program sponsored by Red Bull. AFL stars Travis Boak and Christian Petracca were his mentors and among the discussions were about how to deal with all the attention – and the scrutiny - soon to come his way.

“Yeah, coping mechanisms,” he says. “They both said, ‘You know who those people are, they don't have any influence, so you just listen to the people that have your best interests and love you and care for you and actually understand you as a player the most and as a person. That's what you should just focus your attention on.’ And I think that's what I'll do.”

Sheezel will earn more than $100,000 next year as a high-level draftee. By his second contract, he could be earning four times that, or even more. For now, he is content for his manager, the highly-regarded Paul Connors, to look after his finances.

It is another sign that football is now his career. But as lucrative and cut-throat as it is at the elite level, he hopes that the sense of fun that has come from kicking a Sherrin footy from the time he could first walk never leaves him.

“The best feeling in the world is when you've played well after a game or you kicked the goal and your team's doing well. You can't get that anywhere else, I don't think,” he says.

“So that's something that I love working towards. Putting in the extra work outside of training even when it is hard at the time and it's probably mentally hard to do it. But yeah, it's a great feeling to be part of something.”

Photo: Harry Sheezel in action (Dylan Burns/ AFL Photos)