\n The Gold Coast SUNS have re-drafted midfielder Ben Jepson at today\u2019s AFL Rookie Draft.\n <\/p>\n
The Gold Coast SUNS have re-drafted midfielder Ben Jepson at today\u2019s AFL Rookie Draft.<\/p>\n
Jepson was previously delisted ahead of the October 31 list lodgement day with the club committing to re-selecting the young midfielder ahead of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Jepson\u00a0joined the SUNS as a supplemental selection period (SSP) selection ahead of the 2025 season following impressive VFL campaigns for both Southport and Coburg.<\/p>\n
He made his AFL debut against the Adelaide Crows in Round 19, 2025 and also played 16 VFL games last season, finishing second in the SUNS VFL best and fairest.<\/p>\n
The selection concludes a significant Telstra AFL Draft for the club in which five StreetSmarts SUNS Academy graduates were drafted to the club, as was young Tasmanian defender Avery Thomas.<\/p>\n
Gold Coast quintet Zeke Uwland (Pick 2), Dylan Patterson (Pick 5), Jai Murray (Pick 17), Beau Addinsall (Pick 18) and Koby Coulson (Pick 46) all joined their hometown club across the last two nights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to have welcomed several fantastic young talents to our club this week,\u201d Gold Coast SUNS National Recruiting Manager Kall Burns said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe identified this year\u2019s group as a particularly special crop of Academy talents and did plenty of work behind the scenes to push picks into this year\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only did that involve selections from this year\u2019s draft and from recent seasons, but also bringing forward future 2026 picks as well. There were a number of tough decisions on some great players that were made as well to place us in this position.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic to also bring in player of Avery\u2019s quality and I\u2019m sure the whole Tasmanian football community will closely follow his journey with us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThese selections complement the experience we were able to bring in throughout the Trade Period, as well as re-drafting Ben today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SUNS commence pre-season training on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Gold Coast SUNS have re-drafted midfielder Ben Jepson at today\u2019s AFL Rookie Draft. The Gold Coast SUNS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-302359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}