ROWAN Warfe recalls being put at ease on the eve of the 1993 AFL National Draft when he received a reassuring phone call from Fitzroy at his Bendigo home.

“I had been spoken to the night before the Draft by Fitzroy… they said ‘we’re going to pick you up tomorrow with our second pick if you’re still available’,” Warfe said on Wednesday.

“So I knew the night before the Draft I was going to get taken and was obviously really pumped with that.”

That was 25 years ago and Fitzroy stuck to its word, selecting 17-year-old Warfe from the Bendigo Pioneers with selection No.9.

As the next crop of hopefuls from the Bendigo Pioneers await their fate on Thursday night and Friday when the 2018 Draft is held, Warfe will forever hold the mantle as the first player in Pioneer history to be drafted.

There has subsequently been a further 67 players who have come through the Pioneers program who have been drafted, with that number set to grow by at least one this year with Jye Caldwell touted as one of the top prospects.

Warfe’s selection in 1993 came after the Pioneers’ inaugural season in the TAC Cup in which they were coached by Tony Southcombe and won only one game – against North Ballarat.

But Warfe – then in Year 12 at Catholic College Bendigo – was a standout for the Pioneers in a year where he showed his versatility.

He played in the forward line and centre for the Pioneers, and in defence for Victoria Country in the Teal Cup and as such attracted plenty of interest from prospective clubs, which was relayed in the form of an old-fashioned letter sent via the post.

Among the clubs who had shown an interest in Warfe was the team he supported – Essendon – which invited him to Windy Hill during the September school holidays.

“Essendon was a bit ahead of the game in terms of testing potential draftees because there was no draft camp back them,” Warfe said.

“I remember  testing against Fraser Gehrig and doing things like 400s, 800s, 3 km runs and vertical leaps and things like that.”

READ MORE – Bendigo trio recall being part of first National Draft in 1986

The 1993 AFL National Draft on October 29 was the first to be televised and Warfe’s wait to hear his name was shortlived given he went inside the top 10 and ahead of the likes of Brad Johnson (Footscray, No.11), Chris Scott (Brisbane, No.12), Adam Simpson (North Melbourne, No.14), Gehrig (West Coast, No.16) and David King (North Melbourne, No.46),  

Coached by Robert Shaw, Warfe was one of three top 10 selections for Fitzroy in 1993, along with Trent Cummings from South Australia at No.6 and Chris Johnson from the Northern Knights at No.7.

“I was really happy to be on a list at any club in that point of time. I was still doing Year 12 at Catholic College and had to start my exams the following week after the Draft, so it certainly took the pressure off getting picked up by Fitzroy,” said Warfe, who is now a junior coach at Golden Square.

Warfe would go on to spend three years with Fitzroy, playing 26 games – his first a seven-point loss to Brisbane at the Gabba in round 18 of 1994 in which he had 13 touches – before the club merged with Brisbane at the end of 1996.

He then spent eight years with the Sydney Swans, playing a further 84 games for a career tally of 110, making him one of 21 Pioneer draftees to have played at least 100 AFL games.

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