We bring you all you need to know from the newspapers around the country in the latest Swans in the media.
No wedding, but Mills is a best man
Sam Landsberger
Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, September 7
CALLUM Mills suspected what was coming.
Early in the year the Sydney draftee asked permission to skip the Round 16 trip to Geelong so he could attend eldest brother Wesley’s wedding in California.
“They didn’t have to think for long to say, ‘No’,” Mills told the Herald Sun.
“Football is a tough industry and you have to make sacrifices to play AFL and it’s one I was willing to make.”
Mills stayed, played, kicked his first goal and starred under the Friday night lights — scooping the Rising Star nomination in a victory which ultimately delivered the Swans the minor premiership.
At first that nomination stopped locker buddy Kieren Jack “yapping in my ear” that Mills was yet to get one.
On Tuesday it morphed into the overall Rising Star, Mills, 19, saluting after fellow Swans Dan Hannebery and Adam Goodes.
His family missed the Cats win — “they all forgot to wake up in the morning” — but were in the Crown Palladium audience as Mills made history by becoming the first Rising Star winner to score a nomination after Round 14.
The courageous halfback polled 49 out of a possible 50 votes, with Cameron Ling giving Western Bulldog Caleb Daniel top honours.
All ten judges rated Mills and Daniel the standout pair.
Sydney’s new rising star chasing Selwood path to the flag
Greg Denham
The Australian, September 7
The AFL’s newest Rising Star, Sydney’s Callum Mills will be hoping to emulate 2007 winner Joel Selwood, the Geelong captain and three-time premiership player.
Mills is the first Ron Evans Medal winner since the highly-decorated Selwood to have come from the minor premiers, and he could follow in his footsteps by also earning a premiership medal in the same year. When Selwood won his Rising Star award, the Cats went on to win their first flag since 1963.
Mills is also the first Academy player and first NSW-born teenager to win the award and will be the first winner since Adelaide’s Michael Talia in 2012 to then play in a finals series that month. The 19-year-old yesterday became the third Sydney player to take the honour, following the success of Adam Goodes in 1999 and Dan Hannebery in 2010.
The junior rugby union player polled 49 votes out of a maximum 50 (from 10 judges), meaning just one member of the panel — Geelong premiership captain Cameron Ling — failed to give him top votes. Ling gave his five votes to runnerup, Western Bulldogs midfielder Caleb Daniel, with 41 votes. Carlton key-position player Jacob Weitering finished third on 26 votes.
Essendon’s Darcy Parish finished fourth (19 votes) and Collingwood forward Darcy Moore was fifth with nine votes. Four other players received votes — Melbourne’s Christian Petracca (two), St Kilda’s Jade Gresham (two), Melbourne’s Clayton Oliver (one) and Fremantle’s Lachie Weller (one).
While Mills has a rich Australian football heritage — his grandfather Ray Mills played 110 games for Perth in the WAFL, including three premierships in the 1960s, and represented Western Australia four times — the Sydney-born lad played junior rugby union.
It was not until 2010, when Mills was 13 that he switched codes through a series of events involving current Swans chairman Andrew Pridham, a Mills family friend, who was a club director at the time. Mills earned a spot in Sydney’s elite academy after playing with the North Shore Bombers. Mills said he was initially drawn to the code because of its 360 degree dimensions.
“It’s exciting, it’s fast and there’s so many more skills that you can use,” Mills said. “In rugby, I used to kick the ball too much so my coach used to get angry, so I thought AFL was the game for me.”
Rising Star Award winner Callum Mills can join greats of the game
Andrew Wu
SMH, The Age, September 7
The man who recruited Callum Mills says there is no limit to what the Sydney young gun can achieve after he was crowned the AFL's Rising Star on Tuesday.
In a headline week for the code in NSW, the Sydney born and raised graduate of the Swans Academy joined the likes of Adam Goodes, Nathan Buckley and Nick Riewoldt on a star-studded honour roll. The red-hot favourite was the top pick of nine of the 10 judges, beating the Western Bulldogs' pint-sized midfielder Caleb Daniel and last year's No.1 draft pick Jacob Weitering, of Carlton.
Despite playing very little football last year, Mills has become an automatic fixture in the Swans' team that claimed this year's minor premiership and will start the finals as favourites for the flag. And he has done so playing as a defender after spending much of his junior career in the midfield.
Mills is the third Swan to win the award, inaugurated in 1993, joining Dan Hannebery and Goodes. The list of Rising Star winners is a who's who of contemporary football, with past winners including Brownlow medallists Buckley and Ben Cousins, and premiership-winning captains Sam Mitchell and Joel Selwood. The Swans' list manager Kinnear Beatson believes Mills, 19, will fit right into this elite company in time.
"If you use the past winners as a guide, they don't often get this wrong, most of the players on here are very good," Beatson told Fairfax Media. "There's a lot of Brownlow medallists, club captains, who knows? Don't put a limit on him, that's what I'd say about Callum."
MELS FIRED UP FOR FINAL
Jonathon Moran
Daily Telegraph, September 7
THEY’RE all smiles in the corridors at Channel Seven’s Martin Place headquarters but, come Saturday, Melissa Doyle and Mel McLaughlin will be fierce rivals.
Sunday Night host Doyle is the No.1 ticket holder for the GWS Giants while Seven News sports anchor McLaughlin is a Swans supporter. The teams go head-to-head in a Sydney derby at ANZ Stadium on the weekend.
“We are going to whip their butts,” Doyle said.
“The thing I’m most excited about is that this is what we’ve been trying to do since day one in Sydney, starting the finals with the derby in Sydney is just extraordinary. It is going to be a great game with two awesome teams.”
No surface tensions ahead of Sydney derby final
Ben Horne
Daily Telegraph, September 7
THE Sydney Swans have given the ANZ Stadium playing surface their tick of approval ahead of Saturday’s final against the GWS Giants.
The Swans acclimatised on Tuesday with an energetic training session at a ground they haven’t visited all season.
ANZ’s surface has been a source of discontent for the Swans and rival clubs in previous seasons, but on Tuesday the Olympic stadium was looking in mint condition.
Past problems at the venue — which have included unstable turf, pegs left in the grass and exposed bolts behind the goals — now appear long gone.
Swans assistant coach Stuart Dew praised the ANZ surface for last year’s final against North Melbourne as “unbelievable” and anticipates similar conditions for Saturday’s first all-Sydney playoff.
“Yeah, it’s fine, it looks good,” Dew said after the Swans coaching staff ran their eye over the surface.
“We were talking earlier about how last year the surface for the finals was unbelievable.
“Where it’s at today — Tuesday — there’s plenty of time. It’ll be fine. It’s just a good opportunity to train at ANZ. We haven’t played here for a while and there are a few guys that may not have set foot on this grass.
“There are goals at each end but it’s always good to have at least one run out here.”
Football field a safe haven for Swans young gun
Andrew Wu
SMH, September 6
Callum Mills is no stranger to danger. As a kid, he was surrounded by it. He's come to grief on his BMX, on the slopes and was headed for trouble on the dirt bike had his father not intervened. He's broken bones and somehow had a thorn lodged in his tendons. In comparison, the football field must seem like a sanctuary.
"Surviving his childhood was far more daunting," his father Darren Mills said.
The Sydney star is the unbackable favourite to take out this year's Rising Star Award and join modern-day greats such as Nathan Buckley, Adam Goodes and Nick Riewoldt. Time will tell whether he can match the deeds of those stars but his courage and bravery cannot be questioned. Few players attack the ball with as much vigour as Mills, particularly in the air, and even fewer do it as a teenager in his first year of senior football.
The AFL's national talent manager, Kevin Sheehan, has been in the talent identification field for more than 30 years. He rates Mills in the top 5 per cent for courage. He remembers watching Mills have the stuffing knocked out of him as playing as a 17-year-old for NSW. "He was assisted from the ground, I thought 'that's the last we'll see of this fella'," Sheehan recalled. "Then all of a sudden he's back on the ground and dominating. I thought 'crikey, that's courage'."
Mills' father describes it differently. "He can't weigh things normally. He can't tolerate anything other than getting the best outcome," Mills senior said. "Part of his thought process when he backs into a pack isn't 'I'm going to get crunched here'."
Football loving teen inspires Sydney Swans with his heroic cancer battle
News Local, September 7
LIKE a lot of young AFL fans in his hometown, Xavier Slezak dreamt of one day playing in front of a full house at the SCG for his beloved Sydney Swans.
Unlike most boys his age, though, the Waverly College student was actually making inroads on his ambition and at 12 had already spent two years as an up-and-coming member of the Sydney Swans Academy.
Then in April 2014 Xavier’s footballing journey — and almost everything else in his life — was suddenly put on hold. “I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia,” he says. “It was a pretty big blow.”
So began a harrowing two-year odyssey that saw the sports-mad lad undergo numerous treatments including chemotherapy, several operations and constant monitoring — not to mention spending the best part of 12 months in the Sydney Children’s Hospital.
