- Apr 4, 2006
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He's presumably a good enough player that he'll be a permanent fixture in the national team once his college career finishes?
All this talk of him being a cat B rookie is a bit funny in that context (agreeing with your point). It's not James O'Donnell being a talented young son-of-a-former-international cricketer who was picked for Victorian underage squads and thought he woudl give a professional cricket career a crack, but between the ages of 16-17 (when he presumably had to make a choice between the two sports) and 21 he didn't come on as a player and topped out as 'merely' a semi-professional premier cricketer. It's not Alex Keath as an extremely talented young cricketer (part of an Australian U19 WC winning squad and signed professional at that age) that flames out of the system and by the time he's in his mid 20's is barely good enough to get a professional cricket contract anywhere in the world.
He'll be part of an AIS funded program (as he was when he was a teenager) that allows him to be full-time professional and have the privilege of representing their nation in one of the globe's most popular Olympic team sports, in which Australia at least has a moderately successful team. Basically every country in the world plays Volleyball and Australia is 35th in the world rankings.
I assume there’s good money if you play in one of the premier US or European teams? Anyone know how it compares to AFL wages?
Of course Croft will come back to footy. The lure of $$$
There's apparently one player in the Italian Superlega on 900k-1million Euros, but very few anywhere near that at club level. Still get well looked after as top players, but more in kind (vehicle supplied, accomm covered, etc), so hard to get the $ an average AFL player gets.
But Mitchell is rated highly, if he steps up from Canadian comp to US or Europe, comes with a decent profile, still reasonable $$$, European lifestyle, and as threenewpadlocks says, probably a walk-up start for the national team in an Olympic sport.
He also has beach volleyball accomplishments, which due to the surface and 2 instead of 6 players oncourt, is effectively a different sport, but higher profile in some countries than hardcourt volleyball, and again an Olympic sport.
I'm not saying he won't come back to footy, just that I'd suggest it's very long odds considering how his volleyball career is tracking.