WHERE ARE THEY NOW

AN Falcons, ELITE Leigh junior McCorkell footballer spent and a a product year on Geelong’s of the Geelong supplementary “extractor”, list. McCorkell A hard-nosed had stints onballer at North and Adelaide dubbed and the St time Mary’s best-and–fairest before finishing winner his at career Grovedale. on a high as a twoAO: former Thanks Falcon very and much a champion for your down time, at Leigh. Burdoo You’re a Reserve. What are you up to now? LM: I’m in Geelong. I’ve got a business called Turf Care & Hire which services the council and private sector. That’s going well. AO: Nice. It’s been a while since you strapped the boots on. Where did you finish up? LM: Grovedale was the last club I played for. I was part of the ’92 Falcons premiership, ’93 I was on Geelong’s supp list, ’94 I went to North Adelaide and the rest at Grovedale Tigers, who I was pretty passionate about in the end. AO: And, of course, you won two best and fairests to finish your career on a great note. LM: I did. One of them was under Daniel Fletcher, who was a teammate and good friend at the Falcons. We played together at Grovedale, he coached Grovedale and he went on to St Mary’s, where we won two flags. AO: Daniel’s death must have rocked you like it did the whole Geelong community. LM: It was shocking. We were very close. He was a very good teacher, a very good coach and teammate. He was close to everyone, actually. His dad Garry was involved up at Grovedale College at the time, so it hit both clubs pretty hard. AO: It certainly was a tragic time. In terms of your career, how close were you to making an AFL list? LM: Well, I made the state team in the under-18s that year. Carlton and Geelong promised me right before the preseason draft that they were going to take me but they didn’t in the end. It was just one of those things. James McLure got drafted in the mid-season to Collingwood. You get promises but you don’t always get drafted. AO: And when you missed the boat, you headed to North Adelaide. Is that right? LM: Yeah, I had a season over there under Darel Hart. I played with some good players over there. Port Adelaide wasn’t in the competition then, so it was quiet strong. Unfortunately I only had one season over there and I came back to Grovedale. When I made the Falcons team there were six or seven Grovey boys … Luke Rayner, Matt Bruhn, Matt Primus, Daniel Fletcher and Andrew Mensch and I was pretty close to all of those guys, so I went back to Grovey. AO: But you weren’t able to get the ultimate success at Grovey, were you? LM: No. The first year we played yed finals under Mick Schulz. We had all those guys uys from the Falcons playing up there and we had d quite a good team, but North Shore won about five ve flags in a row and we just couldn’t get there. And after a few years everyone went their separate ways. I stuck around at Grovedale, and I could’ve gone to other clubs, but I’m a pretty loyal person and I’m glad I didn’t go because I do love Grovedale. AO: There were some great players in that era. LM: M: Yeah. The best were Tim Sherman and d Frank Fopiani. They were the best t week in, week out. The person on to have the best season n was Paul Lynch at Lara. He tore it apart. AO: Aside side from the two best and d fairests, did you win any other accolades? LM: I won n a reserves best and fairest at North Adelaide, but it was really just ust the premierships at the Falcons. I made a lot of state sides in the juniors, uniors, but nothing much else.