Retired AFL rising star seeking shock comeback

Former Collingwood and North Melbourne utility Jaidyn Stephenson wants to end his brief retirement to play in the AFL next year.

The 2018 rising star winner retired in October last year at the age of 25 – and with a season left on his Kangaroos contract – after losing his passion for the game, at least in part from North Melbourne’s bulk defeats in his four years at the club.

Stephenson has personally approached several AFL clubs, including Port Adelaide and Carlton, to gauge their interest in him, according to three sources who confirmed on the condition of anonymity his wish to return to the top level.

He played for and captained his local club Ferntree Gully this year, kicking 38 goals in 18 matches in division three of the Eastern Football Netball League.

The likeliest scenario, one source said, was that Stephenson, who turns 27 in January, would train with a club in the hope of signing with them in the pre-season supplemental selection period.

He would qualify to be an SSP recruit as a retired player who has not been on an AFL list for at least one year.

Stephenson was the No.6 pick in the 2017 draft, with the likes of Cam Rayner, Andrew Brayshaw, Luke Davies-Uniacke, Adam Cerra and Aaron Naughton among the other top-10 selections in that class.

He played in only eight wins in his 68 matches for the Roos, after playing in a grand final and kicking 38 goals from 26 games in his first season for the Magpies.

Collingwood traded Stephenson to North Melbourne two years later as part of their so-called “fire sale”, where Adam Treloar (Western Bulldogs), Tom Phillips (Hawthorn) and Atu Bosenavulagi (Kangaroos) were also offloaded to opposition clubs to ease salary cap pressure.

“I had games where I had 24 [disposals] and kicked three [goals], and then you come out of your game review, and I felt pretty flat,” Stephenson told the What Could’ve Been podcast last month.

Loading

“It was like, ‘I’ve done this wrong, and I’ve done that wrong’ – is it because we lost, or is it actually what it is? I don’t know. Everything just seemed to be amplified, and I obviously didn’t deal with it well enough, and it did just start to weigh and weigh and weigh.

“Eventually, I just didn’t want to be there – I fell out of love with it, [and] was over it. It was tough.”

Click here to read article