Brian Stynes says that Oisin Mullin’s rapid progress with Geelong Cats could be a game-changer for Irish players heading down under.
The former Mayo star only signed for the club during the AFL close season last winter and will make his full debut for the Premiership champions in Saturday's tie with GWS Giants, just months after taking up Australian rules.
At 23, his development profile goes very much against the grain in terms of the history of Irish players at AFL clubs, with the vast majority making the move as teenagers and a small percentage of those then carving out a career.
Stynes, for example, was 17 when he joined his elder brother, the late Jim, at Melbourne Demons, eventually going on to make his only two AFL appearances when he was 20 before coming home to win an All-Ireland with Dublin in 1995.
But if Mullin makes a success of his AFL career as a relatively late bloomer, it could change the manner in which clubs go about recruiting Irish players completely.
“Definitely,” said Stynes, now a long-time resident of Melbourne once again. “If he’s making it at that age then they mightn’t put so much effort and a lot of money and resources and time into them early if they can just wait and not take that chance at 17, 18.
“You’re not even sure in Ireland a lot of the time if you’re going to be that champion at that age but usually the very good ones are going to come through.
“If you can get a guy out here to cover a position where you might feel they haven’t got enough depth and you can use him after one pre-season, it’ll make teams think, ‘We might grab one out’.
“In saying that, they have an American fella [Mason Cox] playing for Collingwood but he’s seven foot whatever, he came out older as well, and he’s made a good go of it and playing very well at the moment for Collingwood so you just don’t know where they come and what age they come and but they’ll take you at any time if you’re the right player.”
Stynes sees similarities in the profile of Conor McKenna, who quit Tyrone after a frustrating 2022 season and resumed his AFL career with the Brisbane Lions, and Mullin, who has been named at half-back this weekend.
“He was in and out of the [Tyrone] team and coming off the bench and stuff and straight away he’s came back here and he’s playing every game for Brisbane and played well off half-back so it seems to be nearly a position that’s made for Gaelic footballers at the moment, that fast, skilful strong player.
“He’s in sort of the same mould. Even though McKenna played forward for Tyrone, he never played forward here, he plays half-back, which is interesting.
“Tyrone bring him off the bench and all that, why not actually just play him half-back? Sometimes people don’t see what other people see and so I think Oisin Mullin will be the same type of player.
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t be able to make it.”
And with Mark O’Connor (Kerry) and Zach Tuohy (Laois) also in the Cats’ squad for the GWS game, it raises the prospect of three Irishmen playing on the same team in the AFL for the first time.
While Stynes played alongside his brother Jim, as did a third Irishman at Melbourne at that time, the late Sean Wight, the three of them never played in the same team together.
“There could be three players playing on the same team that are Irish. That’s quite an extraordinary statistic.
“There’s been two players playing in the past, obviously Jimmy and Sean Wight at different times. When I played with Jimmy, that was two Irish blokes playing together.
“It’s pretty significant so I’ll be watching with interest to see how he goes,” Stynes added.
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