Four ex-AFL players link up at new club

A former Magpie, two delisted Hawks and an axed Lion are heading to the VAFA👇

EDITOR | February 6, 2021 - 1:20pm

VAFA Premier club Old Scotch have signed four former AFL players ahead of the 2021 season, with delisted Magpie Rupert Wills and ex-Lions utility Toby Wooller returning to their schoolboy side, per The Herald Sun.

Wills and Wooller will be joined by former Hawthorn pair Harry Jones and Mathew Walker, with the latter duo also set to feature with North Melbourne's reserves side this season in the new east-coast Victorian Football League.

Wooller will also be competing in the new VFL division with Carlton, sharing his workload with Old Scotch throughout the 2021 season.

The quartet are set to add an exciting level of top-tier experience to Old Scotch, with Wills playing 23 games for Collingwood across five years at the club.

“He’s returned to play with a lot of his mates that he went to school with and is very close to,” Old Scotch coach Mark Gnatt told The Herald Sun.

Fewest games to 100 career tackles
14 - RUPERT WILLS
16 - JackGraham
16 - Dayne Zorko
16 - Hugh Greenwood
16 - David Ellard

@CollingwoodFC @AFL

— Swamp (@sirswampthing) September 10, 2019

“He was probably a bit stiff to be delisted at the end of last year from Collingwood to be honest, so we’re delighted to have him on board.”

Jones played just the one game for the Hawks, with his debut coming in 2020 against Greater Western Sydney in Round 5.

Walker failed to break into Hawthorn's senior side, while Wooller played a formidable role in the Lions' NEAFL side that went undefeated in 2019.

“The reality is, Harry and Mathew (at North) and Toby at Carlton, they’re going to play a good chunk of their footy at VFL level as they’ve all come straight out of the AFL, so you’d expect they’d play at that level a fair bit,” Gnatt added.

“The way that North’s doing things will mean that those two (Walker and Jones) will train with us a lot like they already have.

‘’With a young group it’s going to naturally allow our boys to grow and develop and one or two of our boys might jump into that level down the track too.

“It just raises the standard naturally and we’ve already seen that with their involvement at training.”