{"id":950529,"date":"2026-11-03T02:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T02:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/950529\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T02:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T02:00:17","slug":"former-afl-ruckman-confirms-new-club-for-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/950529\/","title":{"rendered":"Former AFL ruckman confirms new club for 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AFL<\/a> ruckman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/afl\/players\/tom-campbell\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Campbell<\/a> has confirmed he will play on in 2027, signing with the Maribyrnong Park Football Club who play in the Essendon District Football League.<\/p>\n<p>Campbell, a veteran of 15 years on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AFL<\/a> lists, played for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/afl\/teams\/western-bulldogs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Western Bulldogs<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/afl\/teams\/north-melbourne-kangaroos\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">North Melbourne Kangaroos<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/afl\/teams\/st-kilda-saints\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St Kilda Saints<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/afl\/teams\/melbourne-demons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Melbourne Demons<\/a> throughout his career.<\/p>\n<p>Standing at 201 centimetres, he managed 58 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AFL<\/a> games, but spent plenty of time in the VFL where he picked up two premierships and two Best and Fairest awards in the reserves competition.<\/p>\n<p>Drafted at Pick 27 in 2012 by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/afl\/teams\/western-bulldogs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Western Bulldogs<\/a>, he played most of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AFL<\/a> games &#8211; 42 &#8211; through to the end of 2018 for that club, botting 23 goals.<\/p>\n<p>He then went on to kick 7 goals in 12 games at North Melbourne, and played 4 more games for St Kilda between 2022 and 2024, before finishing his career at Melbourne, where he didn&#8217;t make it onto the field at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AFL<\/a> level.<\/p>\n<p>He suffered a neck injury at the start of the 2026 pre-season, and retired in mid-May of the year just gone, but was coming off a year where he played 17 games for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohanger.com\/vfl\/casey-demons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Casey Demons<\/a> at VFL level.<\/p>\n<p>Maribyrnong finished the 2026 season in fifth spot on the ladder in the top division of the competition, before beating Essendon Doutta Stars by 70 points in the opening week of the finals, and falling short by 22 points against Pascoe Vale the following week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former AFL ruckman Tom Campbell has confirmed he will play on in 2027, signing with the Maribyrnong Park&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-950529","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\/950529","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=950529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}