‘He’s a good human too’: Isaac Heeney’s long AFL journey to date with destiny

The impact of Isaac Heeney has always been immediate, the mythology rich. He is the man with the AFL’s most distinctive blonde mop since Warwick Capper. The first post-Buddy Sydney player that commentators consistently gush over. The jewel of the famed – and, for southerners, deeply threatening – Swans academy.

Then the tough, athletic, versatile midfielder-forward went and added a whole other chapter to the Heeney canon a week and a half ago in a final against GWS Giants. He claimed two mark-of-the-season contenders in a contest against the Swans’ cross-town rivals.

Sydney were reeling, down by four goals at the end of the first half, but there Heeney appeared in the pocket, taking a one-hander and finishing around the corner. Just after the break and this time on the wing, it’s No 5 again, touching the sky before being welcomed back to earth by Jack Buckley. Then, three minutes to go, who else but Heeney tying the match with a kick from 70m out.

His milestone of 200 games in Friday’s preliminary final against Port Adelaide is a celebration absurdly fitting, the timing unquestionably ordained by a higher power. Right now, thanks to his finals masterpiece – and the Swans’ premiership favouritism – Heeney is the AFL gods’ chosen one.

“Yeah, it was a good game,” Heeney says in his understated manner, on the SCG boundary at training on Wednesday evening. He adds, not long after, that he’s not usually the one around the rooms at Moore Park to open his mouth.

“I want to crack in and want to be known as someone that doesn’t shy away from any contests, and leads by example and – I’m not necessarily the most vocal around the group, especially meetings and whatnot – but on the footy field, I feel like I can do that.”

Thanks to his 258 goals and ability to play around the ground – and increasingly in the midfield – for the perennial contenders, the 28-year-old hasn’t needed to say much in his decade in the limelight.

View image in fullscreen Isaac Heeney made his debut for Sydney in round one of the 2015 AFL season as a highly-touted graduate of the Swans academy. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Wild stories have long preceded him anyway, starting in his draft year. That he scored 68 goals in his first season of junior association football. Ran in five tries in a high school grand final when he dabbled in rugby league, the sport played by his father. Averaged more than 200 in cricket.

“There’s a bit of GST on that, mate,” says Chris Smith, the former head of the Swans academy who has known Heeney for more than 15 years. One story, however, he swears by.

The 12-year-old had been selected in a primary schools representative team for the Newcastle area that was competing in a tournament in Coffs Harbour. Smith was there scouting in the formative days of the Swans academy.

“I was at the main oval, and I was watching a game that was very – this is under-12s – one-sided,” Smith says. “I walked out to the back oval and find a little seat on the hill, and was just sitting there and watching. And the first time I saw Isaac, it was purely and simply because he stood out because of his blonde mop.

“Your eye just gravitated towards him, but within a minute he took this mark, and for a 12-year-old ... he got off the ground, he launched, he took it one grab, and then landed on his feet. And I just thought to myself, ‘shit’.”

View image in fullscreen Isaac Heeney takes a screamer for Sydney in an AFL qualifying final against GWS Giants. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Smith introduced himself to Heeney’s family that day, putting into train a series of events that would eventually lead to the SCG on Friday. “He just had this sort of imagination,” Smith says. “And he also had courage.”

One part of Heeney lore is that the Swans managed to steal an elite athlete – the son of a leaguie no less – under the noses of NRL officials, from that code’s heartland of the Hunter Valley. But Smith sets the record straight: there was never the same interest from rugby league as there was from Australian rules.

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Despite Heeney’s biomechanical gifts and mentality – and his love of Anthony Minichiello, Andrew Johns, and the NRL – a future in rugby league wasn’t ever realistically on the table, unlike another Swans academy member, the same age as Heeney.

Tom Trbojevic, Manly’s devastating full-back who was widely considered the world’s best rugby league player until recent injuries, grew thicker and taller more quickly than Heeney, and was courted by NRL clubs who could offer him a professional contract at 16.

“Sometimes in rugby league at 14 or 15, you can get overlooked if you don’t have power and brawn, or you’re not particularly aggressive, or don’t have power-based attributes,” Smith says. “I think [Heeney] could actually imagine and see himself doing quite well in AFL.”

Heeney admits he harboured ambitions to play league in his early teenage years, as a full-back or a winger. But the attention of the Swans academy helped usher him towards the Sherrin.

“I guess I wanted to do that [play league] up until probably the age of 14, 15,” Heeney says. “It wasn’t until that age that I was in the Swans academy and could see a clear pathway there, and loved it, and I decided to have a crack at AFL.”

View image in fullscreen Isaac Heeney has become a fan favourite since joining Sydney in 2014. Photograph: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Joanne Howard, who runs the Newcastle association of Oztag – a popular non-contact variant of rugby league – and is a Heeney family friend, played in a mixed social team in 2011 with Heeney, his mother Rochelle, father Adam, and brother Beau.

She remembers the 15-year-old’s determined play, and skills which were as good as anyone in the competition. But also that, even then, he had made up his mind. “Although we were sad when he shifted his focus to the Swans, we were, and still are, incredibly proud of him,” she says.

Smith now runs talent identification company Sportskey, and has made a career in sport thanks partly to the success of the Swans’ early academy players, like captain Callum Mills and Heeney. “He’s a good human too,” Smith says. “I think that’s the cherry on the top with Isaac.”

But while Heeney’s 200th might be sprinkled with a sense of destiny, Smith admits that, with Heeney, he and the Swans largely got lucky. “We were just very fortunate that at that particular time, that’s what our agenda was – to look for people like Isaac,” he says. “We didn’t know if it was going to work.”

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