Nd fulfilling destiny
to what was being asked of him.”
In a few years, there might even be a second Henry at AFL level, with youngest brother Ollie also part of the famed stable of St Mary’s juniors, invited to trial for the under-16 Vic Country squad.
TEAMMATE Scott Selwood made a couple of interesting predictions on Melbourne radio about half an hour before Henry’s debut on Easter Monday against Hawthorn this year.
“He’s going to be exciting, he’s going to try to jump over about 15 packs today,” Selwood said.
“He’s going to be a really good player for a long time for us, I think.”
The first part speaks to his athletic traits, the second part speaks to the impression he made in such a short period of time. But a really good player for a long time? That is a strong observation about a rookie who has not yet played an AFL game, far removed from simply throwing out a cliche along the lines of, “he gets his chance today and hopefully he does well”.
But Selwood clearly liked what he saw in pre-season and, as has been since proven, with some justification.
As he was speaking above the ground, Zach Tuohy took Henry aside for a brief moment beneath the ground as the stadium pulsed with a building crowd of 73,189.
Without Lachie Henderson and Harry Taylor, Tuohy was suddenly the leader of a defence that was vastly different and drastically inexperienced to the one he played with only two games ago in the 2017 preliminary final.
“He said to me, ‘We’ll all have your back, it doesn’t matter if you make a few mistakes here and there, just move on and we’ll back you in’,” Henry said.
“So I felt I had a lot of confidence from my teammates.”
He ended up finishing the match on the bench with concussion but he has been a mainstay of the back six in recent weeks, earning a blistering induction to life as an AFL footballer with matches at Optus Stadium in Perth and the Adelaide Oval.
It was a far cry from life as a high half-forward in the VFL last year, playing in front of a handful of diehard supporters on bog-heap suburban grounds in the depths of winter.
But that is how far he has come in the space of one pre-season.
“‘Scarlo’ tells me to just back my instincts, he tells me to go for my intercept marks, he tells me to use my ability to run and jump, support my teammates in the air,” Henry said.
“He’s really good, watching vision, picking up the little things I’m doing well and not so well.
“We have a very young backline. I think a few games early, we’re still getting used to playing with each other, but we did learn a lot and you do from making some mistakes and you build on that moving forward.
“I think I’m doing an OK job at the moment but I’ve still got a lot to learn. I’m trying to do my best and play my role for the team.
“When those guys (Taylor and Henderson) get back, I know it’s going to be a lot harder for selection, but hopefully I will have done enough to at least be up for selection.”