Matthew Wade

I enjoyed it so much.

Yeah, footy was my number one sport, obviously.

My father played a lot of local footy down here for Clarence and a few games for Hawthorne, so I grew up around football grounds with guys like Jack Riewoldt, and that's a lot of my memories as a child, he's hanging around football grounds.

So it was certainly my first option, Gerard.

I just wasn't good enough, to be honest.

I wasn't big enough, I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't fast enough, and I played some decent youth footy, but...

So, yeah, it was certainly my first peak and cricket came a lot later.

To be honest, I didn't really start playing competitive cricket until I was probably 14 and took that a little bit more serious from that point onwards and it kind of eventuated that cricket took over, which is...

A good decision, trust me.

I've got a lot more out of cricket than I would have out of footy for sure.

Yeah, as I said, it's always something that I wanted to do, go back to my...

my local community my local club and and and play a few games I certainly didn't think that it was going to be in the seniors I thought I'd play a few games of reserves and then my body would give up and that would kind of be it so it was always the plan yeah to go back and and have a kick it's um as I said it's um it's happened pretty fast in the first month that I've been down there but I'm just enjoying it just to get back on a Tuesday and a Thursday night down to a

Local club, it's freezing cold, it's blowing hard, and just get back to grassroots is something I haven't done for a very long time.

And, yeah, I'm enjoying just that aspect of it, to be honest.

It was hard.

I played a half, actually.

My old man, he coaches Clarence, so he was down there watching.

It was against their side.

I played just over a half in the first game.

My hips and glutes, all the things that, you know, from kicking a footy that I haven't done for 20 years was certainly hard work to get through that game.