“There wasn’t much AFL in my life until I was six or seven,” Bray conceded this week.
“I go for the Dragons and I’m still an NRL man, although the Swans have been the main AFL team I’ve followed for the past couple of years.”
“Dad played for St George at Under 18s reserve level. He made the paper a couple of times and he never played for money back then. There was none around.”
Speaking to carltonfc.com.au this week, Bray, an 18 year-old centre half-forward for Sydney Premier Division club Western Suburbs, was still pinching his cheeks at the prospect of joining Judd and co. at Visy Park.
“I’m a bit stunned you could say . . . it all came as a bit of a surprise. They (Carlton’s recruiting staff) hinted to me that it might happen at the state combine, and we had a meeting in Sydney a few weeks ago where they told me . . . it was pretty cool,” Bray said.
“The plan now is to train like a draftee. It’s a 12-month thing, so I pretty much have to give 100 per cent and see where it takes me.”
Bray said he now expected to jet in to Melbourne with fellow rookies on December 7 for a brief acclimatisation, before returning home for Christmas. He then returns to Carlton early in the New Year to honour his 12-month arrangement.
A 191 centimetre centre half-forward, Bray, who hails from Tahmoor about an hour’s drive southwest of Sydney, has been turning out for Western Suburbs’ seniors since his days as a 15 year-old. Now, having recently completed his HSC studies, he readies for the new phase of his footballing life, having already acquainted himself with the senior players on a whirlwind visit of the facilities last year.
Bray’s father, Bob, a fanatical St George devotee, was there to see the Dragons’ recent NRL triumph, which he thought would never come.
“It’s been a long wait, believe me . . . thirty-one years . . . and I can remember going to the last one,” Bob said.
“With Blake playing AFL over the past five years, we’ve both started to follow the AFL code. He was more of a Swans supporter, and I was a Collingwood supporter as a matter of fact - hopefully you can delete that.”
And that’s because he’s rapt to see Blake in Blue. As he said: “I’ll have to become a new member, learn the culture and learn the history. It’s a real challenge for all of us”.
“The whole family is very excited with Blake joining Carlton. AFL is not in our face all the time, we only get little snippets of it here on the news, so Carlton will be a real eye-opener for him,” Bob said.
“He’ll learn a real lot I’m sure, and the next time we see him he’ll be a little older and more the wiser.
“Blake’s got a little bit of talent. Now he’ll get good coaching and a good ethos which hopefully might lead to him getting an opportunity.”
