THREE days before Michael Hibberd was drafted, he thought he had blown his chance with Essendon.
After missing out on being selected in the 2010 NAB AFL Draft – the third successive intake he was overlooked in – Hibberd was invited to train with the Bombers ahead of the pre-season and rookie drafts.
Hibberd arrived on a Friday, with the selections to be made the following Tuesday. He completed a session of drills under the watchful eye of new head coach James Hird and felt he had managed to show some of his skills.
"I was very nervous not knowing what they were thinking and you've only got a couple of opportunities to show what you've got," Hibberd said in an interview with the AFL Record.
"But I thought I trained reasonably well."
Then came the bigger challenge, when he was asked to participate in a running session the next morning.
"They pulled me out halfway through because I was battling so badly," he recalled.
"I came from training at Frankston (in the VFL) where the standards were a bit different and I was thinking, 'I don't know what 'Hirdy' is going to think of me'.
"Danny Corcoran (who was then part of the coaching panel) said, 'All right, you've had enough' because I was lagging so far behind. I thought I might have done my dash."
That feeling was only momentary. After the run, Hird pulled him aside and told Hibberd the Bombers would "probably" pick him, but offered no guarantees.
Only when list manager Adrian Dodoro called on the Tuesday morning and told him to get to the club did Hibberd get his hopes up that he was about to join an AFL list. Essendon followed through, reading his name at pick four in the Pre-Season Draft.
It is hard to think now that Hibberd, one of Essendon's most important players and one of the AFL's most improved last season, could have been overlooked so many times.
Read the full Michael Hibberd story in the round 22 edition of the AFL Record, which is available at all grounds.
