If our skipper continues to roll out the games like he has over the past six years, Joel Selwood will not only go down as a Geelong great but an overall champion of the AFL.

Monday the AFL announced that together the Selwood brothers were about to hit a combined tally of 534 games, which will place them in fifth spot in VFL/AFL history for the most games by a family of brothers.

This is just another milestone that Joel Selwood will add to his already successful football career.

After Round 16 in 2013 Selwood was named the quickest Cat to ever reach 150 AFL games since his debut. And to top it off he became Geelong’s third youngest player to hit such a milestone.

Selwood has never done anything half-heartedly. According to Inside Football his father Bryce said Selwood’s tenacity and athleticism has been apparent since he was running and jumping hurdles at the age of seven.

By the time Selwood was 10 Bryce had recruited, with little persuasion, retired hurdling coach Adrian Sexton, who also had two sons playing in the AFL.

“I was told by a teacher at Joel’s primary school St. Therese that I should ask Adrian Sexton because he had helped her son in hurdling some years before,” Bryce told Inside Football.

“I went and asked Adrian if he’d have a look at Joel and he said that he wasn’t coaching anymore and he’d retired. But I left a tape with him and said have a look and maybe give me some hints on what I could help Joel with because I had no idea myself.

“He rang me the next day and said ‘when do we start training’.”

After five years with Sexton, Selwood had achieved a mantelpiece of accolades including three state titles in the 60m and 90m hurdles and six medals in middle distance running. At the time his biggest rival was Melbourne player and co-captain Nathan Jones.

“Nathan probably got the best of Joel on most occasions,” Bryce said.

“It was a good rivalry. Back as a nine and 10-year-old you didn’t know who you were competing against a lot of the time, but Nathan had a shaved head even back in those days so I just referred to him as a ‘the bald kid’.”

Selwood’s maturity and leadership tendencies were already starting to show during his time with Sexton on the hurdle’s track.
“He was just so easy to coach,” Sexton told Inside Footy.

“He was a great listener, had tremendous personal skills and fantastic leadership.

“The other thing was that he had a great respect for people, a lot of common sense and a tremendous ability to stick at something.

According to Sexton, Selwood’s fast reflexes and speed have always been one of his number one strengths in both hurdling and football.

“The fact that he had very good reflexes really helped him in the hurdles because he'd get out of the blocks quickly and got to the first hurdle,” Sexton explained.

“You can see it in his footy because he’s off like a shot once he’s got the ball and that’s partly to do with his tremendous reflexes.”

When it came to the 2006 National Draft Selwood had been off the field all year with injuries, however, he wasn’t going to let this get in the way of his dream of becoming an AFL footballer.

Instead of dominating the track young Selwood made sure he was dominating in the gym. He had built up his strength so much he was bench-pressing at a huge 120kg. To put this into perspective he was only 30kgs away from what an elite AFL footballer would press.

However, fortunately for Geelong Selwood’s injury cloud meant six recruiters overlooked the future skipper enabling Geelong to select him at pick number seven.

Seven years later Selwood has played a big part in three premierships, been named in the All-Australian side three times, won Geelong’s best and Fairest as well as being nominated as Geelong’s captain five years after his debut.  

The 25-year-old skipper, who underwent foot surgery in early January, is set for another exciting year and is determined to be ready for the Cats first game of 2014 against the Crows, on Thursday 20th. Without being too optimistic, history tells us that our tenacious skipper wouldn’t miss it for the world.