A pair of Tongala footballers who spent most of the 2024 Murray league season on the sidelines will extend their playing time into the summer months by joining Northern Territory Football League ranks in October.
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Blues captain Kyle Fitzgerald and star Merrigum recruit Jack Sinclair are Top End bound after playing just nine games between them this season.
The close friends will not, however, be in the same changerooms as Fitzgerald is heading to Nightcliff and Sinclair playing with the Wanderers club.
Fitzgerald played the first six games of the Murray league season before injuring his knee and then didn’t play again until round 16.
He completely tore his MCL (medical collateral ligament) and damaged his meniscus when he wrapped his leg around a teammate, the longest period he has ever spent on the sidelines.
“Missing so much football was definitely a factor in the decision to head north,” he said.
Sinclair, who was so good in his debut season with the Blues last year, did his ACL late in 2023 and only played three games for 2024 - the first of those in round 14.
He had a scare a month or so ago when he had a knock on the same knee and sat out the last two games of the year to ensure his Darwin experiment was not put at risk.
Outback Australia is nothing new for the two-time Merrigum best and fairest winner and the Darwin football experiment has been on his mind for some time.
“I’ve seen a fair bit of outback Australia. When I was a bit younger we would go on a family trip so the only state I’ve never been in is WA,” he said.
“I am looking forward to a change of scenery and it just makes it better that I get to play footy while I’m up there.”
Fitzgerald and Sinclair will continue the off-season connection the Blues have with the NTFL, which has expanded since NT football legend Cameron Illett started playing with Tongala back in 2019.
Illett, who has been played with Nightcliff and St Mary’s in the NTFL, will again line up for the Territory Tigers team which has been captained for the last two seasons by another Blues star of recent seasons Ryan Nyhuis.
Illett and Nyhuis have been playing together in the AFL Cairns league during the winter months, with top of the ladder South Cairns, but will be back in Darwin for the start of the 2024-25 season on Friday, October 4.
Sinclair, a 25-year-old electrician who lives in Mooroopna, has already secured employment in Darwin and leaves later this week to join the Wanderers in pre-season training.
Fitzgerald, who is also 25, has never lived outside Kyabram and has worked as a welder with CND Contractors in the town since leaving school eight years ago.
A number of current and former Blues have made the trip north in recent years, including Sam Cipriani, Coby McCarthy (now a GVL star with Mooroopna) and Jack Hammond.
Kyabram’s Aidan Robinson and star goalkicker Anthony Depasquale played alongside Cipriani and McCarthy at Nightcliff last year, mostly in the Premier League reserves competition due to the rules concerning non-Darwin players and the NTFL top flight.
Depasquale kicked 43 goals in 19 games (one at Premier League level). It set him up for a huge 2024 GVL season where he kicked 73 goals in 19 games. Robinson played 16 games of Premier League football with the Tigers.
Fitzgerald and Sinclair are likely to come up again other familiar faces when they face Banks in the Premier League reserves competition.
Moama captain Jack Russell was a star of Banks’ 2022-23 premiership, along with two other Magpies Mitchell Lake and James Whitehead.
That team included players from Victoria’s Murray, Central Murray, Eastern, Heathcote, Ellinbank district, Northern and Morninton Peninsula leagues, along with several South Australian clubs, a West Australian and even an AFL Cairns league footballer.
Fitzgerald is the second eldest of four children from the well known former “supermarket family”, his younger brothers Jayden (23) and Mitchell (21) similarly athletic and multi-sports talented.
He was a star under age goalkicker with Kyabram, including the 2017 season when he kicked 45 in a losing Under-18 grand final season.
“We went unbeaten all season, but were beaten by 10 goals in the grand final by Shepp United when they had 12 players come back from their senior team and the Bushrangers,” he said.
The very next year Fitzgerald moved into the ruck and hasn’t looked back. He was runner-up in the Bombers’ reserves premiership team best and fairest, best player in the finals and rucked solo for most of the season.
Four players from that team, Dominic Watt, US College punter Makenzie Ryan and Mooroopna GVL superstar Coby McCarthy all moved to Tongala at the end of that season.
“Looking back it was probably the best thing I’ve done in football. At the time it was definitely a very, very hard decision, because I was very one-eyed Kyabram,” Fitzgerald said.
The Blues were the Murray league surprise packet that made the 2019 grand final, losing to Nathalia in the grand final by 45 points.
Many believe only COVID, which cancelled out the 2020 season and saw the 2021 finals abandoned, cost the Blues a chance to break a premiership drought that is now into its 40th year (Tongala’s last grand final wins were the GVL back-to-back wins of 1983-84).
Sinclair was a Mooroopna junior footballer who played in successive premierships with AFL stars Clayton Oliver, Laitham Vandermeer and Jy Simpkin.
“To be honest it was nearly unfair for the rest of the comp how stacked our team was,” he said.
Sinclair, an Orrvale Primary School student and Wanganui High School graduate, switched to Merrigum to play his last season of under-age football with close friend Kellan Robinson and cousin Billy Westerveld.
His father, Peter, played with Merrigum during a highly sucessful era in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Bulldogs won the Under-18 premiership that season and Sinclair not only won the best and fairest, but he also played three senior games with the club.
Sinclair won the 2019 and 2022 senior best and fairest awards, becoming a renowned goalkicking midfielder and then transferring that form immediately into the Murray league.
Despite missing the last four games of the 2023 season he finished fourth in the Tongala best and fairest count.
Sinclair’s close friendship with Kyabam captain Aidan Robinson (Kellan’s brother) has given him a strong insight into the NTFL competition.
“I’ve been talking to him a bit, trying to gather any intel that might help me up there,” he said.
“I’m expecting it to be a fast flowing game, a lot different to what it is down here. I think it will suit me, I cover the ground okay and my kicking is probably my biggest strength.”
Sinclair said his aim was to try and play as many Premier League games as he could and learn from the former AFL players in the competition.
Former Geelong and Port Adelaide player Steven Motlop played with Wanderers in 2023, kicking 12 goals in one game against Tiwi Bombers.
Harley Bennell also played in the competition, with Tiwi Bombers, while Palmerston Magpies had Eddie Betts, Travis Varcoe and Neville Jetta regularly in its ranks.
Among the 39 former AFL-listed players in the NTFL during 2023 were Gary Ablett Jnr, another premiership Cat Mathew Stokes, Port Adelaide’s Hamish Hartlett, Majak Daw and Brisbane and Carlton hard man Mitch Robinson.
Alongside Sinclair and Fitzgerald will be two other Murray league players, Jak Trewin from top team Congupna and his teammate Jack Norman.
Fitzgerald will be accompanied by his father Dallas on the 38-hour drive to Darwin, leaving behind his cricket whites on the back of a 2023-24 Kyabram A-grade premiership season.
“I absolutely love my cricket and I’m going to miss it. I hope the boys go well this year and hopefully last season’s win was the first of many to come,” he said.
Kyabram Free Press and Campaspe Valley News editor