Story by Mitch Brown
Zachary and Jordan Rouse don’t get much alone time.
The twin brothers, both key defenders for the Dandenong Stingrays, seem to do everything together.
They work night fill at the local Officeworks together, they have overlapping social circles, they both study physiotherapy via correspondence at Charles Sturt University and both were up-and-coming basketballers in Mt Eliza as well, thanks largely to their father.
“I’ve been playing basketball since I was in Grade Prep,”Jordan explains. “Dad got me into it, he’s ex-NBL, was in the first Melbourne Tigers NBL team.
“So we were doing that, playing basketball for Frankston, and then doing representative teams until Under-18s.
“While that was happening, we were also doing a bit of athletics down in Mornington, running cross-country events.”
It was obvious to everyone around them that Zac and Jordan were excellent athletes and could both thrive as basketballers or as runners, but then the twins decided on another course of action.
“In my last year of basketball, I wasn’t really enjoying it much anymore, so I decided to see what else I could do.
“We’d always kind of wanted to play footy, but with basketball and running, it took up all of our time. I saw it as a great opportunity, once basketball ended, to give footy a go.”
A friend recommended to the twins’father that he contact Dandenong Southern Stingrays Talent Manager Mark Wheeler and send in some of the twins’basketball and athletics highlights. Soon after, both Jordan and Zac were invited to a Stingrays induction day at the start of 2014 - at which one of the main events was a two-kilometer time trial.
“Yeah that was pretty lucky,”Jordan admits, laughing. “We couldn’t have had a better start.
Both of the brothers impressed the Stingrays staff, particularly Wheeler, who drew obvious comparisons between the twins and Geelong Cats ruckman Mark Blicavs, due to the shared basketball and athletic background, and the lack of substantial football experience.
Zac and Jordan’s performances throughout the pre-season culminated in playing two games each for the Stingrays in just their first year of playing football, and being listed as 19-year-olds for season 2015.
Stingrays Talent Manager Wheeler said, “Both boys have exceeded expectations on where we thought they might get to. To have never played a game of Australian Rules before and to hold a spot each week in the TAC Cup or VFL is a huge achievement.”
“They would have to be the most coachable I have seen, along with coming into a program without any bad habits, that has helped.”
“When the squad had running, Jordan and Zach would spend all their time honing their foot skills, marking has always been their strength. They have progressed from the looping kick to hitting low and long targets.
“To be able to play a couple of games in our first season was just incredible, and we were ready to get stuck into this year,”says Jordan.
This season has certainly been a fruitful one for both the Rouse brothers, even though there has been a bit of divergence between Zac and Jordan’s football careers - while Jordan continues to be a stalwart in the Stingray defence and play an occasional game locally in Mt Eliza, Zac has been absent from the Dandenong program for most of the season as a result of his involvement with the Frankston Dolphins VFL squad.
Their obvious success is credited largely to the boys’sporting background, according to Jordan.
“When we were doing basketball and running at the same time, it was a 7-day-a-week sort of thing. It was our lives. And it’s really helped us to get into that mindset of making the commitment with [football] as well.
It’s a commitment that certainly makes a typical week for the Rouse twins a hectic one. “We’ll do three to four hours of school study a day, just watching lectures, doing assignments and practice exams, quizzing each other. Obviously footy on Tuesdays and Thursdays, matches on Saturday, and in between that we have a couple of night shifts a week at Officeworks.
“We also do a thing from our running background called a long run, basically whenever we have a Sunday off, like if we play local or have a bye. We used to do them every week last year, but with Stingrays and VFL this season it’s been a bit harder - but basically it’s a 16 kilometre run, so we do those whenever we can as well.”
What with football, running, work and university, it’s easy to imagine that Zac and Jordan would get sick of each other constantly being around, but in actuality it’s something that is appreciated by the boys.
“We use it as a bit of a competition sometimes to keep us driving forward - for example at University we’re always just a few marks off each other, so we’re constantly battling to one-up each other, but we always benefit from it.
“When we’re playing I know that he’s always there to pick me up, and I’m always there to pick him up and give him support when he needs it too.
“It’s sort of like a twin-sense, we don’t even need to communicate with each other, we just know what the other is doing and feeling, it definitely works for us out on the footy field.”
Jordan is listed as 193cm/86 kg and Zachary 191/84kg. Both players hold the Stingrays 3km time trial record (Jordan 9 minutes 12 seconds and Zach 9 minutes and 4 seconds), but have PB’s of 8.54. At this years AFL Victoria testing day both equaled the current beep test held by Stingrays own Billy Hartung at 16.6.
Wheeler concluded by saying, “We always say, its not about the talent you have been gifted with its about how hard you work improving that gift and keeping ahead on the opposition or fellow team mates, both boys tackle everything they do giving it their all leaving no stone unturned on what if.”
Last Modified on 30/06/2015 16:48