COREY ENRIGHT FROM KIMBA TO KARDINIA

teams – under-12s, under-16s and seniors, so for much of his time, he was playing against older boys and, later on, men.

“It probably held me in reasonable stead even though I wasn’t getting the opportunity to perform against the best talent of my age group, which other people had,” he said.

Enright knew nothing of Geelong when he first got there. He had barely been to Adelaide to watch any footy, so Kardinia Park might as well have been on another planet.

“I thought Geelong was a suburb of Melbourne,” he said.

He spent his first 12 months at the club in the VFL.

Fact File

Club: Geelong

Born: September 14, 1981

Recruited from: Kimba (SA)/Port Adelaide (SANFL)

Playing career: 2001-16

Games: 332

Goals: 66

Player honours: best and fairest 2009 (equal), 2011; All-Australian 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016; premierships 2007, 2009, 2011.

Corey Enright likes to joke that it is not that easy for a promising footballer from Kimba (population 629) to be discovered.

It’s about a five-hour drive from Adelaide. You can make the short hop by plane across the Spencer Gulf to Port Lincoln, but it takes another two hours from there to drive to the tiny town, located at the top of the Eyre Peninsula.

But given he was playing senior football for the Kimba Tigers at 15, one or two recruiters did make the trip to satisfy their curiosity.

“They weren’t coming back again once they did,” he said with a laugh.

But the Port Adelaide Magpies saw enough to bring him to Adelaide to play a handful of SANFL under-19s games and, once there, legendary Geelong talent spotter Stephen Wells saw enough to select him with the 47th selection at what became a magical 1999 National Draft haul for the Cats, with champions such as Joel Corey, Cameron Ling and Paul Chapman also making their way to the club.

The pick Geelong used to select Enright with was received from North Melbourne as part of the deal that sent then captain Leigh Colbert from the Cats to Arden St.

For Enright, it was a sliding doors moment in a journey that has taken him all the way to the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

He learned his footy the hard way. At Kimba, there were three

The jump from bush footy, while doing year 12 in a class with just four others, to the AFL system was massive.

“I was paddling just to keep my head above water and understanding what AFL footy was all about and it wasn’t until I had a really good conversation with (then assistant coach) Brendan McCartney, who was a big influencer of mine, that put a few things in place that made it a little bit easier for me and probably realign me and give me the best opportunity,” he said.

Enright played 17 matches in 2001 and was on his way to a career of 332 games, three flags, six All-Australian blazers and two best and fairests, both in premiership years.

He was soon a fan favourite at the Cats, both durable and reliable, primarily across half-back.

There were brighter stars at Geelong throughout his time there, but they were a poorer team the relatively few times his name didn’t feature on the team sheet.

“I think my ability to assess and make decisions probably was the thing that sort of made it easier for me to play,” he said when asked for some self-scouting.

“I wasn’t blessed with any physical attributes like strength or power or speed or anything like that.

“I could run and I had OK endurance, but I think it was more my ability to understand and assess situations, read the play, anticipate, and then obviously make good decisions on the rebound.”

Enright was fortunate to have just two coaches at Geelong.

He broke in under Mark Thompson, and then at the mid-point of his career, Chris Scott came along with a fresh outlook and a change of thinking at probably just the right time in his career.

He praised Thompson as a man manager and for his innate understanding of “when to give me a cuddle and when to kick me up the backside”.

“He understood me and what made me tick. His ability to teach young men to play the game of football was just at the high level and he taught us all so really, really well,” he said.

Enright played in the 2007 and 2009 flags under Thompson.

“Up until then we were probably happy playing footy and enjoying ourselves on the weekend and the win-loss stuff probably didn’t bother us as much as what it should have – and a few of the senior players probably were leading that charge,” Enright said.

“Then they sort of flipped the script and got down to business and got down to work.

“We had the talent but we didn’t always make the hard choices, so I’m forever grateful for his (Thompson’s) wisdom and understanding.”

The 2007 Grand Final was the most one-sided in League history, a 119-point canter over Port Adelaide to end the Cats’ 44-year premiership drought.

Two years later against St Kilda, it was an entirely different story.

“Yeah, the 2009 game was the hardest game that I’d ever played in,” he said.

“Every contest, every decision was just that and obviously it came down to the last couple of moments of the game.”

It is not a game he talks about all that often, especially at work.

Since 2022, he has been an assistant coach at the Saints.

“It’s a bit of a hard one for them,” he said.

Scott took over from Thompson in 2011 and immediately won another flag.

“Again, it was his ability to manage the group and get the group to believe and buy in and get us on a plan that gave us the best chance to win. And he did that year,” he said.

Enright still pinches himself at his good fortune at arriving at

Geelong just as the club was on the cusp of an era of greatness.

It was a group without much hierarchy, where flair and flamboyance weren’t just tolerated but embraced as long as they contributed to team success.

“There’s lots of things that make a good club and obviously it probably comes down to the people really,” he said.

“If you have got good people and you have got good systems in place, most of the time good things follow and happen.

“Our group was such a great group and, obviously one of the benefits of being in Geelong, we did spend a lot of time together, not only at the footy club but outside the footy club, and we had really great relationships and friendships.

“When you care for someone, when you respect someone and when you spend so much time together, you want to do the best for them and you don’t want to let them down.”

Enright never did let anyone down and went into his final few seasons thinking each would be his last.

Indeed, he went out in a blaze of glory in 2016, his last as a player, with yet another All-Australian selection at the age of 34.

He threw himself into coaching thereafter, so the opportunities to sit back and reflect on his career have been few and far between.

The Hall of Fame festivities were one such occasion.

ASHLEY BROWNE