Former Suns star finally fulfilling potential
THE hype surrounding Jaeger O’Meara started very early on.
It was bubbling long before he played his first AFL game with Gold Coast in 2013, starting in country Western Australia when he was still a teenager.
The kid from out west was a future star and everyone who saw him knew it.
Former Sydney coach Paul Roos realised it the second he laid eyes on him.
“I saw him at the SCG before he was allowed to play with the Suns, because he went up there as a 17-year-old, and he was the best kid I’d seen,” Roos said.
Those in the know from Western Australia already had him well on their radar.
The locals there still talk about the day a then 16-yearold O’Meara dominated the Great Northern Football League senior grand final in 2010 to be best afield.
Future Suns teammate Jack Martin, then 15, also put on a show that day playing for the opposition side. It certainly caught the Suns’ attention.
O’Meara won the Rising Star award in his first year, but one day in 2015 changed the trajectory of his AFL career.
Playing in a NEAFL practice match, O’Meara ruptured his patella tendon and did not play for two years.
He will have to manage the issue for the rest of his life, continually working on strengthening and loading the tendon.
But he is now in career-best form and the numbers prove it.
The 25-year-old has helped fill the Hawks’ midfield void and will be crucial to their chances of taking down hosts the Demons at the MCG today.