Before they find out their ATAR scores, hundreds of young footballers’ futures will already be decided.

The AFL’s national draft in November will decide the immediate futures of these schoolboys who are barely men.

Barely 18, they will attend, or log in to, a national draft at which dreams will either be realised or dashed, bags packed for cross-country flights or cross-city drives, or, more commonly, thrown against a wall in despair.

Jason Horne-Francis and Nick Daicos have stamped their class on the AFL in their first three years.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

If lucky enough to be chosen in the draft, they will enter an AFL industry of acute pressure. The demand to perform is urgent, the analysis of individual sporting performance granular, the intensity of social media attention sudden and unsparing.

Overwhelmingly, the teenagers arriving in the system are not physically, emotionally or mentally ready for the pervasive intensity of the game. Many 18-year-olds struggle with the change from school routines to university or work, let alone a professional football environment.

The mental health problems of footballers are real and now well-known.

AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon wrote in his foreword to the AFL Industry Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy for 2024-27: “Mental health remains the number one issue of importance for our players”.

And yet kids enter a system, get paid a relatively........

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