How a cricketer with one game of First XVII school footy experience ended up on Bulldogs' list

Western Bulldogs defender James O’Donnell certainly didn’t make his way into the AFL via a traditional pathway.

The son of former St Kilda player and Australian cricketer Simon O’Donnell actually tried his hand at making it in the summer sport first before eventually signing on at the Whitten Oval as a Category B rookie.

O’Donnell played both sports growing up but says he chose to pursue cricket originally after struggling with footy before a growth spurt where cricket looked like a more likely professional option.

“It's definitely been a bit of a different journey than most,” O’Donnell told SEN’s Future Stars.

“I played footy and cricket growing up ever since I can remember and just loved doing both playing with my mates.

“I sort of had a little bit of a rough patch with footy at about 15 or 16, just due to growth … I wasn’t big but I had long legs and I wasn't able to move very well. Everyone else was sort of bigger and stronger than me.

“Then I grew again. I had my main growth spurt around 17 or 18 that COVID year and I was able to find some confidence back with footy. But COVID interrupted that and cricket was the was the choice from there.”

O’Donnell, 21, attended school at Melbourne’s Xavier College alongside several players from his year level who ended up being drafted.

At that stage though, O’Donnell was a long way off joining them on an AFL list given he’d only played one game for the school’s first 22 - which ended up being his last game of footy before joining the Dogs.

“My year level especially, we had a pretty solid group of lads and a lot that you see on show now,” O’Donnell said.

“On the weekend we had a couple playing for Port Adelaide in Dante Visentini and Josh Sinn, Fin Macrae had a great day against West Coast for the Pies. That’s just to name a few.

“I was playing in the seconds in year 11 at Xavier. I managed to get one game in the firsts … but I was about six feet tall and not moving too well on the half-forward flank.

“It actually turned out to be my last game before signing with the Bulldogs.”

While O’Donnell never got to prove himself as a star schoolboy footballer, he began to look impressive on the training track after shooting up to 197cm around his year 12 season.

Unfortunately for him, that year was scuppered by COVID.

As a result, he stuck with cricket and only began to think about even playing VFL after making a joke to then Western Bulldogs high-performance manager Matthew Innes, who was also his bowling coach at Essendon Cricket Club where O’Donnell was playing First XI Premier Cricket.

That joke then led to a meeting with Dogs VFL coach Stewart Edge who presented the opportunity to O’Donnell to sign on as an AFL player via the Category B rookie program given he hadn’t played any footy in three years.

“I wanted to push myself as far as I could in cricket,” O’Donnell explained.

“But in COVID, we still trained with footy in year 12, and I got a lot of confidence from that as I'd shot up and put a bit more weight on.

“It was just at pre-season cricket in Bundoora in the indoor nets there with Essendon when I spoke to a fella Matthew Innes who was the high-performance manager at the Dogs … he was our bowling coach.

“I'd been sort of stewing over it for a while that I just needed to go find out if I could play footy and see how I would go because I didn't want to regret it once I got older.

“I just went up to Matt and made a joke if he could get me down to the VFL with Footscray.

“The next day, I just had a phone call with my brother, and I was like, ‘I said this’, and he was half serious in his response and said, ‘Call him’.

“Matt put me in touch with Stewart Edge, we went for a coffee and ‘Edgey’ just said, ‘There's this Category B opportunity that you could have a crack at’, as I hadn’t played for three years.

“The rest is history.”

O’Donnell went on to make his AFL debut just 35 days after signing on as a Category B rookie, following just three games for Footscray in the VFL.

He has since played 17 games including five in 2024 where he’s been used as a tall defender. He had 21 disposals and five marks in Saturday’s 91-point win over Richmond at the MCG.