Jake Stein competed in the 2014 Commonwealth Games as a decathlete, loved NRL club Penrith as a child, and didn’t know much about AFL until his running coach introduced him to some GWS players in 2011.
On Sunday, Stein makes his AFL debut for the Giants in their Hobart clash with North Melbourne.
The 25-year-old’s journey, from having no interest in AFL to becoming an obsessive fan watching all nine games some weekends then playing, is remarkable for several reasons.
There are some parallels with the transformation of Geelong’s former steeplechaser Mark Blicavs. He missed out on the 2012 London Olympics but is now among the league’s best defenders, twice winning best and fairest.
Stein shifted from western Sydney to Perth in 2015, struggled with some injury problems and quit athletics in 2016 after failing to reach the Rio Olympics.
Stein told John Quinn, the mentor who helped him win gold at the 2011 World Youth Championships, he was moving back home and would play football in Penrith.
Quinn, GWS’s inaugural high-performance director who returned to the club in 2015 after recovering from a rare autoimmune disease, made some calls.
“Next thing you know he’d organised a meeting with (Giants list coordinator) Luke Power,” Stein said.
“A couple of weeks later I was back in Sydney … trying to get on the list.”
Stein, who never played the sport as he preferred athletics, soccer and rugby league at school, was a nervous wreck when he first had a kick with Giants coach Leon Cameron and football manager Wayne Campbell.
GWS saw enough to sign him as a category B rookie, the same speculative contract handed to Blicavs plus Adelaide’s Hugh Greenwood (basketball) and Alex Keath (cricket).
Quinn and Stein’s schoolmate Michael Hartley, who made his AFL debut with Essendon in 2016, were both big supporters as the Giant essentially learned the game in the 2017 NEAFL season.
The defender gained confidence in 2018 and now feels ready to step up following Nick Haynes’ injury.
“I’ve come a very long way,” Stein said.
“It was a bit of a struggle at first .. took me a little while to adapt.
“Physically it was very tough. Change of direction type things.
“Decathlon is a pretty lonely sport, not many people are silly enough to do 10 events, let alone train for it as seriously as I did … (now there are) 45 blokes who are not just teammates but become your best mates and closest brothers.”
Stein wasn’t exposed to AFL until he did some running work with Adam Treloar and others during the Giants’ embryonic days but quickly became a fan.
Memories of a 2013 Canberra road trip with one of Stein’s close friends are still vivid.
“We were that cold we ended up cuddling each other in the crowd,” he laughed.
“I just loved watching the boys. Loved the atmosphere and thought ‘how good would it be to be on the other side of this fence one day’.”
