The Crouch boys – Adelaide’s Brad and Matt – don’t take a backward step, whether it’s a brotherly stoush or hunting the ball on the football field. The Record's Adam McNicol joined them recently in their hometown of Ballarat.
Brad and Matt Crouch are kicking back in the kitchen in their parents’ home in Ballarat’s western suburbs. Their teammate Taylor Walker, who shares a house with Brad back in Adelaide, is relaxing nearby on the couch. Sky Channel is on the TV.
It is the first weekend of round 18, and the Crouch boys are back home for a few days. A chat with the AFL Record is briefly interrupting their rest and relaxation.
Questions about their AFL careers draw straightforward answers. Then the conversation moves on to their battles in the backyard as kids.
The brothers, a pair of knockabout but super-competitive young blokes who were born 15 months apart, get a glint in their eyes.
“Virtually all we did was play footy and cricket when we were growing up,” Brad, 20, the chattier of the two, says. “There was nothing else we really tried. We just played out the back here and out the front here a lot, and in the shed for cricket.”
Were you the sort of brothers who belted the stuffing out of each other?
“Yeah, we were,” says Brad. “He broke his hand on my hip once. We’ve had a lot of fights.”
“I used to win most of them,” quips Matt, 19.
“Just before I went to Adelaide, he whacked me,” Brad responds.
“I didn’t,” says Matt.
“You did. It was out here in the lounge room. We were having a fight. I touched him up first and the old man got in between us. I thought Matt was gone, so I started walking off and got whacked from the side.”
Neither of the boys can recall what triggered the ‘biffo’, but both chuckle at the fact they remain great mates despite their brotherly blues.
“We have always been really close,” Brad says. Matt nods in agreement.
The Crouch brothers’ competitive instincts, and their prodigious sporting talents, emerged before they started school.
According to their father, Phil, who enjoyed a long and successful playing and coaching career of his own in bush football: “It started real early, from when they were little fellas. They both played in state teams in footy and cricket from under-12s.”
The cricket matches at the Crouch household were legendary among the locals for both the seriousness in which they were taken and the talent on display.
“They were probably more competitive when it came to cricket,” Phil says. “They loved testing each other out, whether it was in the shed or down at the nets. Brad could bowl reasonably fast, so Matt used to have to cop a few around his ears at times.”
Among the other regular participants in the backyard games were their best mates, Nick O’Brien and Matt Begbie. O’Brien made it all the way to the Australian under-15 cricket team, but eventually chose to pursue a football career and was drafted by Essendon in 2011.
A gifted batsman, Begbie stuck with cricket and was man of the match for Melbourne in the 2012-13 Victorian Premier Cricket Grand Final. At one stage, it seemed Matt was destined to follow a similar path.
“Brad gave up cricket reasonably early, but Matt played some firsts games of Premier Cricket with Melbourne when he was 15 or 16,” Phil says. “He went on and played under-17 rep cricket, and he actually played with Ashton Agar, who played for Australia.
“I was thinking Matt might have headed the cricket way, but he likes the physical side of footy, and cricket probably didn’t fulfil that.”
Indeed, their love of physical competition was a key reason why the Crouch boys chose football.
“When I first met them, they showed me this game they used to play in their lounge room,” explains Phil Partington, talent manager for TAC Cup club the North Ballarat Rebels.
“They would put a footy in the middle of the lounge room. One would start at one end and one at the other end. They would yell out, ‘go’. Whoever got the footy first had to try and dish it off while being tackled. Getting the ball to the couch was worth one point and I think the lounge chair was worth a goal,” Partington says.
“You can imagine that being the dogged guys they are, they were so determined not to get beaten. And it wasn’t only physical. They would try and break each other down mentally as well.
“I said to Debbie, their mum, ‘How many tears were there at the end of it?’ She said, ‘There were tears every night, ‘Parto’. Not theirs, mine.’”
Phil remembers that the boys were also happy to show off their competitive instincts in more public arenas.
“One of the funniest things was when they were part of the Vic Country squads under Leon Harris. I think Matt was trialling for the under-16s and Brad was in the under-18s.
“They had a scratch match where the young boys played against the older ones. Leon jokingly said, ‘Now you two Crouch boys watch each other.’ Within the first minute, Matt had got a handball and Brad had bowled him over.”
Even on the rare occasions when they were on the same side, the boys, who are both midfielders, were regularly involved in disagreements.
“They really haven’t played much footy together,” Phil says. “I think they played one year together at the Ballarat Swans in the under-12s.
“But they played two or three games together at St Patrick’s College, and I remember one night they came home and they were both arguing about the centre-bounce set-up.
“They were going on about who should’ve been the target for the tap and who should’ve been blocking. Matt was annoyed that Brad was pulling rank on him and always being the target.”
Although they were selected in many elite squads as juniors and were part of a renowned program at St Pat’s, the brothers received a well-rounded football education.
In their mid-teens, they each spent time playing senior football for the Beaufort Crows, a small club based 50km west of Ballarat.
They were encouraged to play by their dad. Phil has been a physical education teacher at the Beaufort Secondary College for around 20 years and has had three stints as the Crows’ senior coach.
“I have this theory, and plenty others out in the country agree with it, that if you can handle yourself at 15 or 16, then you should play some senior footy,” Phil says. “It toughens you up a bit.
“You get used to the physicality of playing against men, and then you don’t get intimidated as much when you go back to your own age-group.
“It’s worth giving kids that opportunity if they’re ready and keen. You don’t get any easy kicks out there, so the boys learned a lot of good lessons from that.”
At 16, Brad played nine senior games for Beaufort in 2010 (his father was the coach that year). Matt was also 16 when he made 11 appearances in the Crows’ senior side during the following season.
Both boys look back fondly on their time at Beaufort.
“We loved it,” Brad says. “It was different. I think it’s good for any kid to get exposure to senior footy at any time.”
Brad found his way to Adelaide in late 2011 via the mini-draft of 17-year-olds, which was organised to help expansion club Greater Western Sydney build a competitive list.
He had missed a lot of football that year after breaking his leg in the NAB AFL Under-18 Championships, but his performances in the TAC Cup had cemented his reputation as one of the most talented youngsters in the nation.
“Brad would be in the top two players in my time at the Rebels,” Partington says. “The other is Jeremy Cameron.”
Too young to play in the AFL in his first season at the Crows, Brad spent his weekends running around in the SANFL with West Adelaide. He helped the Bloods progress all the way to the Grand Final, which they lost to Norwood by 49 points.
At the same time as Brad was finding his feet in the SANFL, Matt was making a name for himself in the Rebels’ midfield. He played 15 TAC Cup games in 2012, then saddled up for a second season with the Rebels in 2013.
A broken hand slowed his progress early on, but he averaged 37 disposals in the seven matches he played. He was named in the Rebels’ best three players on each occasion.
By the time the 2013 NAB AFL Draft rolled around, Brad was on top of the world. He had played 14 games in his debut season at the highest level and had finished second, behind Gold Coast’s Jaeger O’Meara, in the NAB AFL Rising Star award.
Well aware that Brad was having the time of his life in the city of churches, Matt hoped he would find his way to the Crows as well. His dream was realised when Adelaide snared him with its first pick (No. 23).
Partington is convinced the Crows landed themselves a bargain.
“Matt might be a better clearance player than Brad, but there was always a question mark from AFL clubs about his running ability,” he says. “That’s probably why he dropped down the draft order a bit. But I can already see how the full-time environment at Adelaide has changed his body shape and his running capability.”
Matt made his AFL debut for the Crows in round three against the Sydney Swans. He gathered 18 disposals in the loss to the Swans, then backed up with 23 and a goal in a victory over St Kilda the following week.
In round five, he picked up 28 touches in Adelaide’s big win over Greater Western Sydney, although he has found himself back in the Crows’ SANFL team in recent weeks.
Brad’s frustrating season means the Crouch brothers are yet to play an AFL game together.
Brad battled achilles soreness during the summer, then broke his leg against Port Adelaide in round two. However, he has bounced back strongly. His 40-disposal performance against Hawthorn three weeks ago was particularly impressive.
“My body’s fine,” Brad says. “I’ve been pulling up really well from games. It’s about getting through the year and then getting back into bloody pre-season again.”
To this point, the fame and pressure associated with being AFL players hasn’t changed the Crouch boys.
They still love getting to back to Ballarat and enjoying a few quiet ales with their mates from school and local football.
“When you get a bit of time off it’s good to have a beer and relax,” Brad says. “You’re still young and still human. We’re only 19 and 20. A lot of our mates go out Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So you miss out on a lot of that.”
They still love down-to-earth sports like harness and greyhound racing.
“Because the Ballarat harness and greyhound tracks are not far from our house, we used to go there on Thursday nights,” Brad explains. “I ended up buying a harness horse six or seven months ago. It trialled three times and then got injured. It’s done. I was spewing.
“After that we ended up buying a dog with Nick O’Brien.”
The dog – Rylee’s Marshall – won a race at Geelong recently.
And they still love taking each other on when they get the chance.
In fact, Partington sometimes rues the fact they weren’t drafted by different clubs, which would have allowed them to do battle in an AFL game.
“It would’ve been a great contest,” he says. “You would’ve happily paid the entrance fee to watch the two boys go at each other.
“It would be great watching an intra-club if they got put on each other. It would end up in a fight, I’ve got no doubt. But they’d be best mates two minutes afterwards.”
