AHMEDABAD: At 33, Campbell Brown is too old to play Australian rules football. But he is still young enough to pick up another sport. The AFL (Australian Football League) veteran has put on hold a cosy media career and is currently leading Australia in the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup, underway in Ahmedabad.
“I am considered very old in Australia for sport,” says Brown, whose massive upper body speaks for the years of hard work that goes into the making of a pro-athlete. “In AFL, players’ careers last only about four years. They get drafted at about 18 and their careers are over at 23-24 years of age; the average lifespan is 40 games in four years. Kabaddi gives them a great opportunity to play for Australia in other sport.” Brown, an anomaly, has played more than 200 AFL games over 11 years.
The Australian kabaddi team, which has two more big-time AFL players in Stephen Milne and Adam Schneider, has banked on the popular game and rugby to create a pool of players. They had less than a month to prepare and rely more on brute strength than tactical polish. That also meant they had to work a lot harder at dropping below the 85-kg cutoff for the tournament.