By Nick Creely
Aaron Darling will be entering this year’s TAC Cup season hell bent on making up for lost time.
One of the hard luck stories of the 2017 AFL draft, Darling, 19, will return to the Dandenong Stingrays as a top age player in 2018 after recovering from a full knee reconstruction that ruined his 2017 season.
Darling told the Journal his body is “100 per cent” heading into Round 1 against Geelong Falcons on Sunday 25 March, but won’t be rushed back in unnecessarily.
“I’m kind of just ticking all the boxes and not really having my sights set on anything; it’s clearly good to have a goal at the end, but I just want to tick off each box as I go and see what happens,” he said.
“I’ve been back at full training since the start of December so I’ve picked things up again really quickly.”
The creative forward is also fully over missing out on the draft, even though he was part of the AFL Academy, but said he expects to mix some TAC Cup football with some VFL games as he pushes a case for an AFL spot in 2019.
“I kind of knew coming into the draft that I didn’t have a great chance of going, and I hadn’t played much of late, so I’m just really excited to play,” he said.
“I think the club will try and push me through the VFL early, either with Frankston or Casey, and hopefully push on from there.
“I just really want to play footy.”
But Darling said he’s learnt a lot from a year on the sidelines, saying he has found a new perspective on how to look at the game.
“Even looking at football from a coaching side of things last year really helped, and I know my body a lot better now, so yeah, I definitely learnt a lot along the journey,” he said.
