Photo credit: Churchie Sport<\/p>\n
Another Queenslander has joined the AFL system and will join the West Coast Eagles.<\/p>\n
Jake Miles-Wrency, a one-time Coorparoo junior, signed with the West Coast Eagles on Tuesday after a sporting journey that crossed two sports and two countries.<\/p>\n
A 199cm 20-year-old, he was signed by the Eagles as a Category B Rookie six years after being judged the best player at the Queensland Under 14 football championships and nine months after heading to the United States on a basketball scholarship.<\/p>\n
A State junior football teammate of 2025 Lions premiership pair Levi Ashcroft and Sam Marshall, Miles-Wrency committed to the Eagles after an impressive summer trial in Perth.<\/p>\n
He was eligible to do so without going through the normal draft channels because he has not been a registered footballer for the last three years. Or in his case six years.<\/p>\n
Indeed, his last official football was at Under 14 level, when playing at Coorparoo while attending Church of England Grammar School, he won the Jason Akermanis Medal as the best player at the Queensland State Championships.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an award also won by Lions\u2019 dual North Smith Medallist Will Ashcroft and rising SUNS key forward Jed Walter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miles-Wrency had preferred basketball to football in recent years, representing Queensland at State U16, U18 and U20 level and winning a place in the national junior pathway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He captained the Churchie First V in his final year and won a basketball scholarship to Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville, Illinois.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s another part of the JMW story \u2013 Belleville is the birth place of former world tennis #1 Jimmy Connors, 1968 US Masters golf champion Bob Goalby, and actor Buddy Ebsen, best known for his role as \u2018Jed\u2019 in the long-running television sitcom The Beverley Hillbillies, and his title role in the television detective drama Barnaby Jones.<\/p>\n
Coincidentally, too, Miles-Wrency\u2019s early football pathway via Coorparoo and Churchie is identical to that of Hawthorn champion and AFL Hall of Fame Legend Jason Dunstall.<\/p>\n
West Coast Head of List Management Matt Clarke said Miles-Wrency\u2019s athletic profile was \u201celite\u201d, with his 20m sprint time of 2.92 seconds equal to that of Cooper Duff Tytler, who joined West Coast via pick #4 in last year\u2019s national draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really excited to add someone of Jake\u2019s athletic capabilities and his football skills during our trials really started to shine,\u201d Clarke said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a very eager learner and driven character who is keen to get started.<\/p>\n
\u201cJake has the athletic profile to play at either end of the ground, and the coaches are eager to see where he develops best.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking forward to Jake joining us very soon and integrating into our football program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miles-Wrency described as \u2018unreal\u2019 the phone call from Eagles coach Andrew McQualter advising him of his latest career move.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting the call from \u2018Mini\u2019 (McQualter) was so special and meant so much. It’s been a dream ever since playing footy as a junior,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve had some great experiences from playing basketball and look forward to using those skills to complement my footy. It’s a great combination of an exciting young team with some highly experienced guys and an amazing coaching staff that I can’t wait to learn from.\u201d<\/p>\n
So how did Miles-Wrency end up in Perth as a potential member of the AFL \u2018Hyphen Club\u2019?<\/p>\n
When things weren\u2019t going quite as planned in the US he decided he\u2019d like to give football another crack. And through the widespread personal maze that is the AFL recruiting and player management network he made contact with Clarke, previously at Richmond. \u00a0<\/p>\n
And, as the saying goes, the rest is history.<\/p>\n
Miles-Wrency will be the 44th Queenslander on the lists of the 18 AFL clubs this season and the first at West Coast, where he\u2019ll team up with the ex-Brisbane trio of 2024-25 premiership player Brandon Starcevich, Deven Robertson and Elliot Yeo, and ex-SUNS rookie Sandy Brock.<\/p>\n
There are two other significant connections to Queensland football at the Eagles \u2013 senior coach McQualter and Kyal Horsley, who is going into his third year as coach of the Eagles\u2019 WAFL side, both played at the SUNS.<\/p>\n
McQualter, originally from Gippsland, played five games in red and yellow in 2012 after 89 games at St.Kilda from 2005-11, and Horsley, from Kalgoorlie via WAFL club Subiaco, \u00a0played 14 SUNS games in 2012-13.<\/p>\n
Thirteen clubs will have a Queensland \u2018flavor\u2019 this year \u2013 all but Carlton, Essendon, GWS, Sydney and St.Kilda \u2013 and Carlton are coached by Queensland\u2019s all-time #1 player Michael Voss. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A total of 47 players with a hyphenated name have played in the AFL since a 17-year-old Gordon Ross-Soden played his one and only game for Essendon in 1906.<\/p>\n
The #1 ticket-holder of the Hyphen Club is Melbourne Team of the Century centre half forward and Australian Football Hall of Famer \u00a0Ivor Warne-Smith, who played 146 games for Melbourne in 1919 and from 1925-32. He won a flag in 1926, claimed the Brownlow Medal in 1926 and 1928, was Demons captain from 1928-31, and fought in World War 1 and World War 11.<\/p>\n
Will Hoskin-Elliott, a foundation player at GWS in 2012 and a premiership team member at Collingwood in 2023, heads the Hyphen Club games list at 242, from current Port Adelaide player Darcy Byrne-Jones (221) and Adelaide\u2019s Alex Neal-Bullen (201).<\/p>\n
Queensland Football Hall of Famer Che Cockatoo-Collins, born in Brisbane, raised in Cairns and a 160-gamer at Essendon and Port Adelaide from 1994-2003, is the most experienced Queensland member of the Hyphen Club. And with twin brothers David and Donald, who played at Melbourne, makes up the entire Queensland \u2018division\u2019 of the Hyphen Club.<\/p>\n
Miles-Wrency will be hoping to join this special group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo credit: Churchie Sport Another Queenslander has joined the AFL system and will join the West Coast Eagles.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-534693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534693","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=534693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}