The players could feel it and the coaches could see it. This Dom Bunyan kid running around at Kippax Oval was anything but a fourth-grader.
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He had clearly come a long way since he was first dragged to Belconnen Magpies training as an 18-year-old a couple of years earlier.
There was no doubt Bunyan had outgrown the fourth grade and third grade competitions he was sliding in and out of, and in 2008 things rapidly started to change.
Bunyan started in fourth grade. Then he went to third grade. Then second grade. Then came the call-up to first grade - all in the space of one season.
Now Bunyan will play his 150th first grade game for the Belconnen Magpies when the AFL Canberra competition leaders face the Ainslie Tricolours at Alan Ray Oval on Saturday.
"It’s a trivia question at the club. I think there is only two that it has happened to (the other being Jackson Rowe in 2006)," Bunyan said.
"I used to play rugby league but the body was a bit too small and I was getting a bit smashed, so I had a mate that dragged me along to AFL training and it went from there.
"The level was getting better and better [each time I went up a grade] so it was a matter of having to improve increasingly quicker. Every time I went up a grade the skills would get better.
"Obviously coming from rugby league my skills weren’t fantastic to start off with. I had to put in a bit of hard work at training and improve rapidly.
"I had a couple of years in the threes and the fours, and then I started working with [ex-Magpies stalwart] Brendan Read. In 2009 he talked me into having a real crack at first grade.
"That was the first year I played every game in first grade and obviously we won the premiership that year so it was good."
The flag is a clear highlight in the 31-year-old's 149 games to date - but sitting right next to it is the fact he has spent almost every one of those games alongside the same core group of senior players.
Bunyan, Ryan Turnbull, Chris York, James Bennett, Lexie Bennett, and Blake Talsma have become synonymous with the Magpies, but injuries will keep Turnbull and Lexie Bennett out of Bunyan's milestone game.
"It’s been great to play most of my games with them, I would have played nearly every single game with Chris and James so it’s a pretty proud moment," Bunyan said.
"You’ve got the core seven or eight senior blokes, and the junior blokes really are starting to step up now. We actually do a lot of work with our juniors, we go and train with the juniors.
"It’s one of James' mentalities to make sure we go and get around the juniors, get them coming to the club and supporting us. As long as we’re digging from the junior clubs we should be sweet."
Bunyan will line up against another player celebrating his 150th first grade game in Tricolours forward Nick Paine as one of the league's most heated rivalries ramps up.
AFL CANBERRA ROUND 11
Saturday: Ainslie Tricolours v Belconnen Magpies at Alan Ray Oval, Queanbeyan Tigers v Eastlake Demons at Margaret Donoghoe Oval, Gungahlin Jets v Tuggeranong Hawks at Gungahlin Enclosed Oval. All games at 1.30pm.
