King keen to bring it home
BEN King celebrated a childhood dream by making his AFL debut last weekend in one of the biggest days of his life.
But the Suns draftee is looking forward to turning down the hype and focusing on just football when he plays his first home game for Gold Coast against Geelong today.
“Getting a taste for it last week, I feel like it will settle the nerves for the matches to come,” King said.
“It will be good to play without the debut fanfare of last week with all my family and friends around me. It will feel more like a game of footy.
“It was still nice having my parents there. They have shared my whole journey with me and drove me to training since I was six.
“It was their debut as much as mine.”
King went from playing in front of around 100 people at Aspley’s Voxon Oval for the Suns NEAFL team to 26,129 at Adelaide Oval in the space of a week.
The wet conditions in South Australia didn’t play into the 18-year-old tall forward’s hands, with the 202cm talent forced to scrap it out at ground level.
King didn’t impact the scoreboard but coaching staff were impressed with his ability to provide a contest in the forward line.
“One of the biggest things I found in the step up was the speed of transition you have to have and how quick you have to think on your feet,” King said.
“The ball can go from one end of the other so quickly.
“As a forward you have to be switched on to try and defend. That was probably the main takeaway from it.
“I also took some confidence out of it, knowing I can find space a bit as well. I found myself in space a bit but my marks just weren’t sticking.
“The coaches were happy with how I competed. I tried to not get out-marked and bring the ball to ground for our smaller guys to get to work.
“It was a tough day to take marks in those conditions. Their main thing was that I competed hard and brought the ball to ground and for the most part I did that pretty well.”