Cody Brand - One week as an AFL listed player

It's been a whirlwind week for Cody Brand who once ran out onto Tony Clarke Reserve as an RDFNL Junior and now he is mixing it with some of Australia's great athletes at the Essendon FC.

Brand went at pick 53 this time last week in the 2020 National Draft.

We caught up with Cody to see just what it is like being an Essendon Bomber.

How has your first week been as an official AFL player? It’s been a long tiring week no doubt about it, plenty of medical screenings, media, and then a day of training on top of it all but the bombers have been great with how they have integrated us draftees into it all.

Has the whole draft process sunk in yet? I’d say a little bit for sure, once you set foot in the club you sort of put it behind you and just worry about what’s to come.

Had you had much contact with Essendon prior to being drafted? Well, I’m lucky enough to be apart of their NGA program through my indigenous heritage through my mother's side of the family so the bombers had been in regular contact with me to make sure I was alright and still ticking over the training session necessary throughout the year to put myself in the best position possible position to be drafted.

Which club did you support growing up and where did you want to go? I grew up an Essendon fan so it was always a dream of mine to play for the red and black.

If you had to pick one player in the AFL who play a similar brand of football who would it be? As a kid, I idolised Dustin Fletcher and I try to mold my game around him, he was a phenomenal player one of the game's greatest backman so I really admire and look up to the way he played his footy.

Can you please talk us through your junior football career and your involvement with the RDFNL? So I played for the Macedon Cats for 7 years, all my juniors from under 10’s until under 16’s and when I was about 14 we had moved back to Sunbury, so in 2018 I decided I’d leave and play a little bit closer to home and play for the Sunbury Lions in the Ballarat League. It was an amazing journey up at the cattery, I met so many wonderful people and mates I will have for a lifetime.

What’s the best memory you have of the RDFNL? Not too sure if it's my best memory but one that sticks with me the most but I just remember Sunday footy being the thing you’d hang out for all week, you’d have a long week at school and get to the weekend and know that on Sunday you’d be able to go out and play with your mates and although the weather wasn’t always nice in the Macedon ranges It was just the joy of doing it over and over again with all your mates.

What are you expecting the training load to be like over the next few months? I know it's large, there obviously is a shorter turnaround this pre season to next season given this year being pushed back. All the 1st to 4th-year boys plus some senior boys have just put in a massive two-week block pre-Christmas and are all keen to get stuck into it with the whole group come early in the new year. So there’s a pretty good feeling amongst the group down at the hanger at the moment

What’s the goal for 2021? Personally ill be trying to get as fit as I can and make sure my body is ready for any opportunity that arises, but as a group, everyone has a clear cut vision of what our goals are internally and what it's going to take to meet those goals so we will keep chipping away.