ONE of Daniel Pratt’s favourite sayings is ‘some people rob banks, some rob football clubs’.
Naturally, Pratt doesn’t belong to the former category and he also dislikes football mercenaries, so that eliminates him from the latter.
While he understands the need players have to make ends meet, for Pratt life after AFL is not about dollars.
“I’m not a massive fan of blokes going and just playing for money,” Pratt said.
“I was more interested in going down a coaching path with an AFL club and that’s what I’ve done.”
When his time with the Roos finished, Pratt chose the Box Hill Hawks for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, Pratt gained a mentoring/development position with Hawthorn Football Club and it was a perfect fit given the alignment between the two clubs.
Pratt, who works with the AFL Hawks young defenders, spends a couple of days a week at Hawthorn as well as working for the AFL and working privately.
After 119 games with North Melbourne and Brisbane over an 11-year AFL career, Pratt also wanted to pursue playing football at the highest possible level he could.
“I enjoy playing football, Box Hill is a good club and they definitely play to win and I enjoy that element of it,” Pratt said.
“The alignment (with Hawthorn) is really good, they play to win. It’s not as if ‘we’ve got to get this bloke right or that bloke right’.
“You get to play to win every week, which is good.”
Pratt’s VFL career started with the now defunct Murray Kangaroos, a club he guesstimates he played nearly 50 games with.
As North Melbourne has switched alliances – they were even hooked up at one stage with Tasmania – Pratt played with Port Melbourne and Box Hill Hawks.
After all those stop overs, Pratt racks up his 100th game this weekend when he’ll lead Box Hill Hawks out against Northern Blues.
Asked if he had put a timeline on when he could see himself playing to, Pratt laughed: “next week.”
“It’s definitely taxing playing VFL football whether you are a young or an old bloke just with the amount of work and effort you have to put in to compete against guys on an AFL list,” he said.
“You basically have to be as fit and as strong, but you have to do it in an eighth of the time.
“You work all day then go to training and you might not get home until after 9 at night and you do that three times a week.”
Pratt definitely wants to pursue a career as coach in the AFL system when he finishes playing.
“I’ve got so much to learn, there is so much behind the scenes stuff that you don’t think about when you are playing,” Pratt said.
“I’m enjoying it and hopefully in the next few years I can nail a full time position – hopefully at Hawthorn,” he said.
Before that chapter begins, Pratt would like nothing more than to help Box Hill Hawks win its first flag in more than a decade.
Much hard work awaits, but Pratt knows that everyone at Box Hill Hawks is there for the right reason.
Last Modified on 18/07/2013 16:29