Norwood will not only be celebrating its Regional Zone of the Eyre Peninsula in Round 6, but also Nik Rokahr, who will be playing his 100th SANFL game.<\/p>\n
The Victorian midfielder who moved over to South Australia for the 2020 season, has fully entrenched himself into Adelaide and the Norwood Football Club, stating that the club felt like \u201chome\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never hidden how much the club means to me \u2013 a lot of people here mean a lot to me, they took me in when I hadn\u2019t proven myself and gave me a chance at the level. It\u2019s (Norwood) my home, as much as Shepparton is now, it\u2019s my home club,\u201d he said on The Redlegs Review Podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played VFL for Geelong in 2019, I got talking to someone close to me (about heading to the SANFL), I didn\u2019t really want to move from Vic but I wanted to prove to myself that I could play at this level. I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d stay this long, but I\u2019m glad I have and I\u2019m looking forward to what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first came over I just wanted to prove to myself that I could play at the level, so to play 100 games is special.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very grateful for the opportunities that past and present coaches have given me, and I can\u2019t wait to get out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got over to Adelaide when I was 23, it was the Covid year in 2020 so we played the 14 games, I also had that year away in Perth, so it has felt like it\u2019s (100 games) has taken a long time, but it\u2019s been good.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Norwood Premiership player in 2022, Rokahr has won two Michael Taylor Medals (2021 and 2022), and come runner up in the League\u2019s Magarey Medal twice.<\/p>\n
After 73 games for Norwood between 2020 and 2023, he relocated to Perth for the 2024 season, playing for WAFL side Swan District and winning the League\u2019s Sandover Medal.<\/p>\n
Despite a tumultuous time trying to be released by Swan District and return to Norwood for the 2025 season, Rokahr said he had fond memories of his time in WA.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people hear the last part, but it was a great year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy partner is from Perth, and we opted to make the move that year, and it was really enjoyable, I have a lot of great mates from Swan District, we made a prelim, I had some individual success as well, but it was hard to do some things with my family back in Victoria, so we decided to come back to SA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rokahr has enjoyed the opportunity to play alongside good mate Harry Boyd, who also headed to The Parade from Shepparton.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are both from Shepparton, and played in a premiership back there, breaking an 18-year drought, and we were pretty young which was great,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got over to Norwood the year before he did, and he\u2019s been one of my favourite teammates, a Magarey Medalist and he\u2019s been awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Redlegs take on West Adelaide at Centenary Oval in Port Lincoln this Saturday, with both sides taking winning form into the Round 6 contest.<\/p>\n
Norwood had an outstanding 49-point win over Central District last Saturday to make it three consecutive wins, while the Bloods upset reigning premiers Sturt in a close encounter at Richmond Oval in Round 5.<\/p>\n
Rokahr said he and the side always enjoyed the trip to the Eyre Peninsula.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great, it\u2019s a beautiful part of the country and we look forward to getting over there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really good trip to build comradery, we get over, stay together and spend a lot of time with each other. We feel like its a boost early in the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to the full interview below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Norwood will not only be celebrating its Regional Zone of the Eyre Peninsula in Round 6, but also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-652749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652749","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=652749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}