A NEWBIE to the Horsham District league, Harrow-Balmoral’s Todd Lawrence said he has loved his first season playing football in the Wimmera.
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“I grew up around Seymour and played juniors out there,” he said.
“I moved to Ballarat Grammar for boarding school in year nine. I played for Lake Wendouree there in the Ballarat Football League.”
Lawrence was picked up as a promising young ruckman by the Greater Western Victoria Rebels, taking part in the under-16s and under-18s Rebels program. Lawrence played alongside Horsham’s Jarrod Berry with the Rebels, who now plays for Brisbane in the AFL.
“I played with guys like Jarrod and Hugh McCluggage who now play AFL,” he said.
“It was a good experience playing there. With all the coaches and the ruck coach I learnt the basis of my game there. It was a totally different experience and it built my football up to the style I play now.
“The guys there were unreal and at training you never saw people train harder than guys like Jarrod and Hugh. It shows why they have made it to where they are now.
“They put the time and effort in and even outside of football they were always working hard to help them along the way.”
Although Lawrence would have loved to have made it to the AFL, he said he always had aspirations of working on the land. He spent all of last year working in the Northern Territory on a cattle station.
“It’s always a dream to make it to the AFL but you can’t set your expectation just on making it there,” he said.
“I always had other dreams of working on the land. You can’t rely on that one thing to be your actual career, so I had to have other plans to work around it.
“Last year I went up to the Northern Territory and worked on a cattle station for a year. I missed football but it felt good to have a bit of time out and just get away from everything for a bit. It was good to have a break.”
Upon returning to Victoria, Lawrence made sure he scouted out a club to join before the start of this season.
“Then I found a job at Nareen Station at Coleraine down here and found out where the best club close to there was,” he said.
“I got in touch with Nick Pekin and said I was pretty keen to get involved and I worked my way into the team from there.”
Lawrence said he had enjoyed getting back into football.
“It’s been helpful getting back into footy and Harrow-Balmoral has helped me a fair bit along the way as I’ve found my way back into the game,” he said.
“You can definitely sense it that everyone has had enough of losing those last couple of grand finals. Even though we’ve lost a fair few players everyone is very keen to get that premiership.”
