POISE, balance, silky skills, vision and precise disposal.They are all traits that have become synonymous with St Kilda star Nick Dal Santo during his 167 AFL games for the Saints.And they are traits that will be on display today when the Saints battle Geelong in the AFL grand final at the MCG.While they are sublime qualities that have helped establish Dal Santo as one of the AFL’s elite midfielders, they can be traced all the way back to his early days when playing for the Mandurang Junior Football Club’s under-12 team as a 10-year-old in 1994.“I first met Nick when he was probably six or seven years old, and you could tell even back then that he was always that much better than everyone else, and he was just a good kid to go with it as well,” Dal Santo’s coach of the Mandurang under-12s, Graeme Warfe, recalled this week.“He just seemed to have so much time and balance to firstly, get the ball, and secondly, get rid of the ball, and everything seemed to just come naturally to him.“And he was always very good at thinking his way through a situation.“I remember once he played in the Bendigo Junior Football League representative side against Ballarat when he was nine or 10 years old.“He had been on the bench and we brought him on in the last quarter.“There was one piece of play where he took the ball out of the centre and ran towards the goal, but there was this big Ballarat full-back standing in front of him.“So Nick kicked the ball over the top of the full-back, ran around him, picked the ball up again and kicked a goal.“He just had that ability to get the ball, be clean and precise with his disposal, and seemed to have all the time in the world to do it.”A quick glance through Dal Santo’s list of achievements as a junior footballer make it clear the former Strathfieldsaye Primary School, Flora Hill Secondary College and Bendigo Senior Secondary College student always seemed destined to make it in the ranks of the AFL.In his first season with the Mandurang under-12s in 1994, Dal Santo, despite being a rover, won the club’s goalkicking, along with the best and fairest, plus the BJFL best and fairest.Over the following seven years, Dal Santo played with Mandurang, Kennington-Sandhurst and the Bendigo Pioneers in the TAC Cup, building up an impressive junior CV of accolades that had him touted as one of Bendigo’s most exciting prospects.“He was very enthusiastic in all his sport,” Dal Santo’s father, Peter, said.“He always had extremely good co-ordination and awareness; we always encouraged all our kids (Nick, and daughters Megan, 23, and Sarah, 20) to participate in sport and give them as much opportunity as possible.“A lot to do with why Nick has been able to get to where he has is due to his own motivation and dedication, but to say that at an early age he was going to be something special, we never thought that.”Reflecting on the very beginning of Dal Santo’s career with the Mandurang under-12s in the BJFL, Peter recalls the influence of Warfe as his first coach.“Graeme was one of the most influential and motivating coaches on Nick; Graeme was just a great coach of kids,” Peter said. “Nick was tiny in that first year, and basically all throughout his junior career he was always rover because he was one of the smallest.“I just looked at some of his old jumpers the other day and the number goes in relation to your size, with the lower the number the smaller the person.“Nick was generally number four, five or six, so he was always tiny, but fast.”Asked if he recalls one particular junior game where Dal Santo stood out to the point that he thought his son had that something special where he could perhaps make a career out of football, Peter recalled the 1999 BJFL under-15 grand final.Dal Santo was playing for the star-studded Kennington-Sandhurst side against South Bendigo, and was awarded best on ground, standing out in a team that also boasted fellow future AFL players, Troy and Adam Selwood, and Rick Ladson.Just like Dal Santo is aiming to do today, Adam Selwood and Ladson have already played in AFL premierships - Selwood with the West Coast Eagles in 2006, Ladson with Hawthorn last year.Kennington-Sandhurst, coached by Phil Peat and captained by Dal Santo, won in a canter by 135 points, 19.25 (139) to 0.4 (4).Dal Santo (three goals), vice-captain Ladson (five goals) and the Selwood twins were named Kennington-Sandhurst’s four best players in the thumping grand final win.“Nick’s performance in that grand final was nothing short of outstanding,” Peat said.“We didn’t see much of Nick that year because he was involved in the Vic Country squad with basketball, and also represented Vic Country with footy, so he played with us when he could.“On the Friday night at our last training session before the game, Adam Selwood came up and told me Nick wanted to play full-back on Hayden Polglase.“I let Nick play on Hayden for five minutes and the way he attacked the footy from full-back was just brilliant.“Nick then went into the centre and just dominated and won the Bendigo Pioneers’ award for best on ground, which was presented by Neville Strauch.“He was beautiful on both feet and with the way he kicked back then, it was like a man kicking a ball to you.“He was absolutely sensational - a pure delight to coach, and very good with his peers as well.“I can’t speak highly enough of Nick.”As well as the four future AFL players, Kennington-Sandhurst’s under-15 team of 1999 also included a future Olympian in badminton star Glenn Warfe.Also competing on BJFL grand final day at Harry Trott Oval in 1999 was another Selwood, 11-year-old Joel, who was named the second best for St Therese’s Gold in its 21-point win against South Bendigo in the under-12A match.Today, Dal Santo and Joel Selwood will be opponents, with Joel lining up for what is his third grand final appearance for Geelong in what will be only his 70th AFL match.However, football wasn’t the only sport Dal Santo excelled in while growing up in Strathfieldsaye.He was also one of Bendigo’s best teenage basketball prospects throughout the '90s, and ultimately had to choose between pursuing a career in either football or basketball.Such was his talent as a point guard on the basketball court, Dal Santo represented the Bendigo Braves at under-12, under-14 and under-16 level at the state country titles, and was also part of Victoria Country squads at under-14 and under-16 age groups.“Nick was extremely good with his basketball as a point guard, his ball-handling was phenomenal, but he was short, meaning he had to work extremely hard to do what he had to do,” Peter said.“In his under-16 year he made the Vic Country squad and from there basically had to choose between football and basketball, and went with football.“I think he started to love football a little bit more at that stage, saw there was more opportunity, and never thought he was going to be six-foot-six like Michael Jordan.“When he played in his under-12 Victorian side with football, Kevin Sheedy gave him his jumper at the presentation and said the good thing about football is you can be five-foot-six, or six-foot-six, and still get a game.”Among Dal Santo’s junior basketball coaches was Don Coulson, who coached him at under-16 level with the Braves.“He was a very good player who was captain of the under-16 squad,” Coulson said.“He had the talent, but he wouldn’t have been big enough to go on and play for Australia.“It’s no surprise he has turned out such a good footballer because he is what they call a coaches’ delight with the way he listens.”As well as football and basketball, there was also athletics, where in 1995 Dal Santo represented Victoria at the Australian Primary School Championships in long jump, the 200m and several relays.The decision to stick with football over basketball reaped its big dividend when on November 25, 2001, Dal Santo was selected by St Kilda with pick 13 in the national draft from the Pioneers.The Saints had secured pick 13 as part of the trade deal that sent volatile forward Barry Hill from Moorabbin to the Sydney Swans.Also selected at the 2001 national draft was Dal Santo’s 1999 Kennington-Sandhurst under-15 premiership team-mate, Ladson, who went to Hawthorn at pick 16.Such were their prodigious talents, both Dal Santo and Ladson were drafted as 17-year-olds, and were still eligible to play for the Bendigo Pioneers in 2002.“The approach we took with it is once you’re drafted, that’s just the start of it, and Nick has been fortunate at St Kilda that he has had some good coaches, really good opportunities, and a lot of damn good players around him,” Peter said.“You can never take any of it for granted because it’s such a tough gig and can change very quickly.”But Dal Santo - who has a room named after him in Bendigo’s B Central building - has repaid the faith the Saints showed by using a first-round pick on him in the 'super draft' of 2001.The 25-year-old has played 167 of a possible 187 games - the first of which was a forgettable 122-point loss to Geelong in round four, 2002 - twice been named an All-Australian, including this year on the interchange; represented Australia in International Rules in 2004; and finished third in the Brownlow Medal behind West Coast’s Ben Cousins in 2005, and sixth this year with 17 votes.However, Dal Santo has endured plenty of heartache to get to today’s grand final against the Cats, having lost preliminary finals in 2004, 2005 and last year.“A lot of people have said Nick has had a good year, but St Kilda has had a good year, and you can’t under-estimate the benefit of what everyone else around you does to the individual, so Nick has been very fortunate,” Peter said.“The heartache and frustration of those preliminary final losses in the past, all those niggling injuries, and all the hard work finally comes to this Saturday.“I have spoken to him a couple of times this week and he is extremely calm. His main emphasis is he will do everything as much as normal.”While Peter describes his own abilities as a footballer when he played in Melbourne and Swan Hill as those of “a bit of a hacker”, Dal Santo’s mother, Eileen, was a talented netballer, while her brother, Jim, is a former captain of the Collingwood under-19s.“Eileen and I are both very keen on our sport, and we still participate in a lot of sport, and that’s what we’ve always encouraged our kids to do, because it’s a healthy lifestyle,” Peter said.“While Nick has got my genes, he hasn’t got my sporting genes - it has been all off his own making.”