Ash Brown

He's the athletic ruckman, wingman, stick him down back.

And just a success story because he was, he played a bit of, as Ben's piece explains, he played a bit of underage footy in the Sunbury area, but then it was athletics and basketball were his passions.

Yeah.

And it's the old, you know, Stephen Wells being the genius he is, you know, someone I think might've been, um,

The Guthrie senior planted a bit of a line to, um, Stephen Wells saying, you know, we've got, uh, Blitz has, he's, he's got an athletic background, but, uh, he was a good footballer back in the day.

And so that started the conversation and planted a seed.

And I think when he didn't get to, uh, the 2012, um, Olympics as a steeplechaser.

Yeah, well, the approach for that one was that Peter Blucher, who's our sort of Queensland correspondent, for lack of a better word, and regular on this show now,

He, uh, he, uh, well, collecting the plan management world.

So he's told the story of how the, the, the campaign, the Brisbane's campaign to recruit Lockie Neal started over a succulent Mexican meal at a restaurant in Darwin.

I think whichever was Neal's last year with a Fremantle, um, the,

Freya was up there, had been up there to play in Melbourne in one of those Darwin games and would hang around the next day.

So they went to a discreet little Mexican place somewhere in Darwin and the Brisbane gave their pitch.

Didn't think much would come of it.

I thought he's pretty established and settled in, um, in Fremantle, but then the end of the year, the end of the season came and he said, I don't know, he's actually interested in pursuing this.

So that's where the, and then it was a really complicated, as before the, after the 2018 season, that's right.

And unbelievably complicated trade that you would be all across better than I would.

involving Chad Wingard and a bunch of players.

Wingard from Port to Hawthorne involved in all this as well.

Very complicated trade.