When their club was in its infancy in the 1970s and players were thin on the ground, the story goes that Pennant Hills footballers would stand by a busy local thoroughfare and wait for cars with interstate number plates to stop at a red light. ''Fancy a game of footy?'' they'd ask, hoping to land a few more Australian football refugees.
Any recruiting drive today might have a simpler, more powerful hook. ''Fancy a game at the club that produced the AFL premier's new co-captains?''
Not that you'll find any framed tributes to Jarrad McVeigh and Kieren Jack - or the other eight former Demons who've made it on to AFL lists - in the ''Penno'' clubrooms. Largely because there are no Penno clubrooms.
''There were two junior change rooms when we moved here [two years ago], we've knocked down a wall in one for our senior room, got a bit of storage, a canteen, very little viewing area,'' senior coach Chris Yard says of the facilities at Mike Kenny Oval. ''It's very low key, that's probably the best way to put it.''
Their old home ground didn't meet AFL Sydney requirements, but the same issues - taking a back seat not only to the rugby codes but to baseball or athletics when it comes to access for training - have followed them to neighbouring Cherrybrook. The current pre-season sweat has fallen on a high school rugby ground.
Yard says they make do with what they're thrown. Homely club rituals abide, like staying back on a Thursday night to hear the teams read out, with only takeaway pizza to combat the concrete block cold.
Those who hold the Demons dear would love to boast ''some of the niceties'' that are commonplace in more traditional football belts, as secretary Bob Wray says of a club he describes as ''resource poor''. Yet by providing what Yard calls ''a very warm, encouraging and nurturing environment'', Pennant Hills has wealth that can't be measured.
''In Sydney, it's done on love,'' Yard says. ''We're full of people who love being around Pennant Hills, it's a very sticky club.''
Danny Ryan is a life member, but hadn't heard of the club until he spotted an ad in The Age in the early 1990s offering work in exchange for play. He moved north, looked them up, and found a home away from home that endured for 15 years as a player and coach.
''It was a special time, when the club evolved from being easy-beats out of second division and a bunch of kids came through with some older blokes who'd played SANFL or WAFL or at a good level in Victoria,'' Ryan says. ''It was a bit of a Camelot time, where Pennant Hills as a club grew up.''
Founded in the mid-1960s as a juniors-only entity, Penno first ran out a senior team in 1971, and in little more than four decades has produced 10 top-flight players. Terry Thripp was the first - and the first Sydney local to play for the Swans (in 1983) - and the club's reputation for growing its own has blossomed.
Lenny Hayes played his junior footy in red and blue, Mark McVeigh juniors and seniors, little brother Jarrad juniors, while Jack was a skinny kid when Ryan spoke to his NSW Rams coach Rod Carter about whether he might be up to a run in the ones. He remembers a quiet, respectful kid with some question marks over his kicking, who ''really hooked into training''.
And carried that enthusiasm into games, as the couple of hundred diehards who saw Jack take on East Coast Eagles ruckman Gus Seebeck, a former Sandover medallist, will never forget. ''Kieren ran off the bench, 17 years old, four-foot-nothing, 70 kilos, and Seebeck's just going to steamroll him,'' Ryan recalls. Jack brought down the giant and won the free. Later that year, he was rookie-listed by the Swans, as younger brother Brandon is now.
The Demons are testament to an evolving AFL pathway in Sydney. Now anchored by the Swans' academy, talent continues to emerge from junior clubs such as Westbrook, Hornsby and Pennant Hills juniors, which all feed into Penno's senior program.
''We're 25 kilometres north-west of Sydney, so we miss the young professionals who land in the city for work, they end up in the eastern suburbs,'' Yard says. ''We rely very heavily on our junior base - that's something we're very proud of.''
When the Swans played St Kilda in a recent NAB Cup game, Yard pondered how grand it would have been had all five Penno boys - Hayes and Jackson Ferguson with the Saints, McVeigh and the two Jacks for Sydney - turned out. A recent presentation to council pointed out that the club boasts the fourth-highest number of players to reach AFL of any in NSW, including the Riverina. ''They're clubs that go back 100 years,'' says Wray. ''We've been around 40.''
Alumni are filling football fields of all sorts. Ryan and another Penno old boy went to see Blinder, the grassroots film written by former Demon Scott Didier. When Jack Thompson's coach read out the team, they laughed at the names of ex-teammates in the fictional line-up. There was no Jack or McVeigh, of course. They're real-life footy stars, leaders of the best team in the land. And their old club couldn't be prouder.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/uphill-climb-to-top-of-the-tree-20130324-2gnzf.html#ixzz2OhoWSFZg
Last Modified on 27/03/2013 14:07
