Young gun’s rise worth the weight

The top prospect in this year’s AFL mid-season draft has not always been ready for the big league, let alone a local league.

During Victoria’s lockdowns in 2020, Ryan Maric reached for a can of Pringles a few too many times.

“I was a massive snacker,” Maric said. “In the Covid year when we were stuck at home I stayed up late at night playing Xbox and I’d snack on potato chips, Pringles, anything I could find. All just stuff that wasn’t really filling and I probably had a lot of it.”

At one point that year, Maric tipped the scales at 107kg. But the Pringles had not been the only problem.

The previous year, the Drouin local had been invited to trial for Gippsland Power’s under-16 squad.

He had to politely decline given a sizeable growth spurt had left him with some growing pains, including lower back and pelvis issues.

Older brother Josh was Maric’s inspiration and a driving force in swapping the Pringles for protein shakes and getting back into the gym.

“I was a pretty active kid but it was just my diet holding me back,” Maric said.

“My brother got up to 100kg as well and he decided to lose the weight. He got into all his gym stuff and his nutrition. So once I saw him lose the weight, I was like, ‘Wow, I can do this as well’.

“I’ve just cut out all the junk food and all of my snacking.”

In less than three years since then, Maric has dropped a whopping 24kg.

He is now maintaining a healthy weight of 83kg on his 193cm frame.

Since Maric got himself fit enough to play senior football for Drouin in the Gippsland League last year there has been no looking back.

Having returned to the forward line, he kicked 6.4 in a senior match against Moe last August – a game in which Drouin had only 10 majors.

After taking up a mid-season offer to train with the Gippsland Power’s under-18 squad, Maric also played three games in the talent league in the back half of last year.

However, it was a four-goal performance for the Power in Round 1 of the Coates Talent League this season which really put him on the radar.