Aussie rules football league eyes U.S. talent

4:07 PM ET

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. — Shane Henry is 50 meters from the finish, and his hips ache. He’s sweating. His legs are done. But the 6-foot-6 (198 cm) Henry knows he needs to back up the previous day’s standout performance if he wants to continue to impress the Australian Football League talent managers, so he pushes hard through the finish line and clocks a top-10 time in the 3K run.

That he’d want to impress these guys at all is something even Henry, a forward for the Virginia Tech basketball team, wouldn’t have believed two months ago.

“I’d never heard of Australian rules football before Coach [Buzz] Williams forwarded me an email and told me he thought I should give it a shot,” Henry says, referring to his head coach at Virginia Tech. “At first, I didn’t want to do it. I was focused on basketball. But then I watched some videos, and it looked like a cool sport. It’s diverse, intense. Why not take the opportunity to try?”

That same open-minded attitude drew 18 college senior athletes out of their comfort zones and to the Los Angeles area this week for the AFL’s fifth annual U.S. combine., which is being held for a specific purpose — to find versatile big men to play ruckman, a position comparable to a basketball center. The ruckman is generally the tallest player on an AFL team. He has to compete for the ball in jump ball-like situations called ball-ups, grapple at boundary throw-ins and run as much as 10 miles over the course of a game. The position requires not only freakish height and athleticism, but also touch, speed, flexibility and endurance.

Talent manager Michael Ablett gives directions at the combine. The players are learning how to play Australian rules football while trying to catch on with the AFL. Lachlan Cunningham/AFL Media

“It’s a specialized position, and these guys fit the build,” says Blair Hartley, a scout for the AFL’s Richmond Tigers. “Their skills transfer to our game, but they’re 23 years old and touching the ball for the first time. There are challenges. Learning to kick, having that feel between your hand and foot, understanding game sense, tackling, running, running while being smashed and tackled. But they’re picking it all up quickly.”

Six years ago, after the AFL expanded to add teams in Western Sydney and the Gold Coast, former Sydney and now Melbourne FC head coach Paul Roos saw the league’s already shallow talent pool becoming even more diluted, especially when it came to finding players who stood 6-foot-6 or taller. He knew some of the best players at the position grew up also playing basketball, and he saw …

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