High hopes for tough Bulldog pup

Bulldog Jack Macrae has slotted into the midfield. Picture: Colleen Petch Source: Colleen Petch / News Corp Australia

THE talkback caller had been following the Western Bulldogs for 45 years, which added a fair bit of weight behind his opinion of Jack Macrae.

"Macrae is as good, maybe a little bit better, than Doug Hawkins at the same age."

Out Footscray way, any comparison with Hawkins is as big as it gets. Dougie is royalty at the Whitten Oval and for a second-year player to be mentioned in the same sentence says a lot.

Macrae is the hottest youngster in the game, averaging 28 possessions in the opening three games of the season and including a match-turning performance against Richmond last week.

Former North Melbourne premiership star David King coached Macrae at Carey Grammar for two years and he hears the Hawkins comparison and then offers a big one of his own.

"He is a silent assassin," King says. "He reminds me a lot of Arch (Glenn Archer), just with the way he is.

"He is a lovely kid and all that stuff but get him out on the footy field and he wants to hurt you, he wants to kill you and he definitely wants to embarrass people which I think is a great trait."

Macrae is a classic cas of "don't judge a book by its cover".

He speaks with a soft voice, his answers are thoughtful and intelligent which makes it hard to believe it's the same person who the story goes recently ripped through former captain Matthew Boyd on the field for not being accountable.

"I save my voice for the weekend I guess," he says.

He was born in Kew, a mad Hawthorn supporter — he wore Shane Crawford's number on his back — who didn't know much about the western suburbs, let alone its football team.

"Probably my earliest memory was when Brad Johnson was under the speccy from Gary Moorcroft."

His obvious maturity for a 19-year-old can be traced back to his upbringing and the extended family in which he was given more responsibility than most teenagers.

Macrae's parents divorced when he was three and his older brother, Tom, was six.

A few years on the family grew with his father, David, who is in the retirement village industry, having two more children, Finlay and Lucia, while his mother had another son, Harrison.

Macrae dishes off a handball under pressure. Picture: Colleen Petch Source: News Corp Australia

"Having two families has been really great for me," he says. "Growing up my parents were pretty honest with me and gave me a lot of responsibility for how I wanted to be seen.

"Footy for me was always my No. 1 priority but having that younger family, having to be more of a role model, made me mature more quickly.

"When Tom moved to the Gold Coast I was the sole older brother but I have lots of fun with them and it's good to be looked up to."

His junior career wasn't the smooth sailing you'd expect from a No. 6 draft pick and he battled to get a look-in for representative squads and at TAC Cup level with the Oakleigh Chargers.

King takes up the story.

"When I first got there (Carey Grammar) I had to try and talk Oakleigh Chargers into playing him and they wouldn't play him which was a real frustration for me," King said.

"He averaged something like 35 possessions in Year 11 and that just doesn't happen. Year 11 kids don't do that, the Year 12s do but the Year 11s just don't.

"The endeavour and arrogance he plays with is great. There were a couple of times where he ran the full length of the ground, it was like he was in the Under 9s, he'd baulk someone, run 30m, baulk someone again, run 20m, and then baulk again."

Over the summer leading into his final school year, Macrae hired a kicking coach, former Carlton premiership player Ian Aitken, to work on his deficiencies.

"I did a bit of work on my ball drop and becoming a more damaging kick," he explains. "In the summer I didn't really do anything other than footy.

"Getting drafted was a priority and even though I wasn't on a lot of clubs radars, I was really keen on getting there."

He quickly did that and produced one of the performances of the U/18 championships, kicking four goals in a quarter to turn the game for Vic Metro against Tasmania.

By the time he led the Chargers to the premiership Macrae was being hailed as top ten material. The Western Bulldogs pounced and also grabbed a schoolmate in Nathan Hrovat at No. 21 in the 2012 draft.

After 13 games in his debut season, the 191cm Macrae — he has grown 3cm since arriving at the Dogs — spent this summer living out of the pocket of new development coach, Geelong's three-time premiership hero Joel Corey.

Corey's best piece of advice?

"Any player can have a good game but the best players do it each week, no matter who the opposition is. That's something I've really taken from him."

While he is confessed footy head who watches as many games as he can on the weekend, the recent hype about his rise doesn't register.

"My little brother likes to tell me after each game how I went in his Supercoach team but I'm not fazed by it all," he says. "I'm a bit embarrassed by it if anything.

"I'm not fussed whether it comes or not, I've just got to please the coaches and my teammates."

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