REILLY O'Brien is a Malcolm Blight Medallist and the man who has gradually risen from a speculative rookie pick to be the heir to Sam Jacobs' throne at Adelaide. But it is the resume the ruckman is compiling away from football that sets him apart from almost anyone playing the game.
The 27-year-old has established himself as one of the most reliable and underrated ruckman in the competition across the past few years, but it is his dedication away from the club that leave many inside West Lakes wondering the same thing: where does he find the time to fit it all in?
Not a single club picked up the phone in O'Brien's draft year. Adelaide was then the only club that expressed interest when he came back to the Calder Cannons as a 19-year-old still hoping to land in the AFL. Even then, he only got one phone call, from veteran Crows recruiter Hamish Ogilvie.
By that point of his life, O'Brien had been accepted into medicine at Melbourne University after achieving an extraordinary enter score of 99.75, but had opted to study a Bachelor of Biomedicine instead to keep his flickering AFL dream alight.
Fast forward nearly a decade and the St Kevin's College product is on the cusp of playing 100 AFL games after managing just two in his first four seasons at the club. In that time, O'Brien has completed a Bachelor of Medical Science at Flinders University in Adelaide, a Master of Neuroscience at King's College London and is now doing a Master of Business Administration and Master of Public Health at Torrens University.
He is far from done in football yet, but when the 202cm, 105kg ruckman is finished in the AFL, the plan will be to finally do what he wanted to do all along - study medicine. That will involve four years of full-time study. Four more years, on top of what he's already completed. You don't need to be good with numbers to do the sums; that is surely more study than any footballer the game has seen.
"I want to be a doctor, so medicine is the plan post-footy, but you can't do that with footy because it has to be full-time," O’Brien told AFL.com.au this week ahead of Showdown 54.
"Neuroscience was my main interest; I'm really interested in the mental health space, the performance space and in concussion as well; it was an area I've always been interested in, just wanted to further my knowledge while I'm still playing.
"I am someone that likes having things to do; I like to be busy and don't like wasting my time. I'm a bit of nerd, I like history and politics. I've always been someone who loves putting in the work and doing stuff. I get satisfaction out of that. My main goal is to just keep getting better every day and keep extending myself, whether that's footy or as a person."
Making the leap from the AFL to medicine is almost unheard of, but not entirely unprecedented. Former West Coast midfielder Tom Swift quit the game four years after being selected with pick No.20 in 2008 to study medicine, before pursuing a career as an investment banker instead.
Matthew Liptak completed his degree while playing for the Crows in the 1990s, finishing the first three years of his course before putting study on hold to join Adelaide's inaugural list in 1991. He won a best and fairest and played 116 games for the Crows, famously completing his degree while still in the AFL, studying on road trips and remarkably working up to 70 hours a week as a doctor in the back end of his career. Dr Liptak is now an orthopaedic surgeon in Adelaide, specialising in sports injuries.
Before O'Brien becomes Dr O'Brien, he is determined to wring the rag dry. That is the only way he has got this far. The Crows have seen plenty of manic trainers up close since they entered the AFL in 1991, but not many are as obsessive as O'Brien.
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"My work rate has been the thing that has allowed me to be an AFL footballer and allowed me to play close to 100 games. It has always been the thing that I think sets me apart from others," O’Brien says.
"I've always tried to be the hardest working player at the club and the hardest working player in the league, really. I've always prided myself on everything I do off the field.
"If I drop off in form, I always come back to my work rate, off-field and on-field, and my grunt and competitiveness. They are my two cornerstones; if I lose them, I am shit, I am not a good player. I always need to maintain those two things to play in the AFL."
There is only so much you do can in the week-to-week hamster wheel of the season. Gains can be made with recovery and diet, and the little things count for more when premiership points are on offer each weekend.
It is across the off-season and pre-season that O'Brien has always made ground. Those inside Adelaide's football department, from GM Adam Kelly to Nicks and the coaching panel, struggle to comprehend how someone with that running gait can cover the ground as well as O'Brien does. But there is no secret to the success: 'ROB' simply works harder than most.
"Pre-season is what sets you up. In season I do lot of recovery, a lot of mindfulness, boxing on my day off to sharpen up. But off-season and pre-season is where you can make gains. I've always been big on extra gym given my position, I would do twice as much work in the gym," he says.
"Last couple of years I'd do swimming three days a week, Pilates three days a week and I've done training with an SAS guy, cross training work with weighted pool sessions, wrestling in the pool. Tough stuff.
"I've probably gone too far at times. Last year I did an absurd amount of work before the start of last season and probably cooked myself a little bit. I was overthinking things. I was 24-7 on the clock all the time. I flew too close to the sun by being too intense. It's important to be balanced. That's been my focus this year. Mindfulness and balance outside of footy."
When O'Brien arrived in South Australia as a teenager, Jacobs was one of the premier ruckmen in the business, earning a spot in the All-Australian squad three times. There wasn't room for two ruckmen so O'Brien had to serve a long, old-school apprenticeship in the SANFL, familiarising himself with Norwood, Prospect and Alberton Ovals before he became accustomed to the big grounds of the big time.
He played two AFL games in late 2016 and featured in 60 reserves games before playing his third, where he returned to the highest level 963 days. Since then, he has won a best and fairest and played just twice more in the twos.
"When I was a young bloke, I wasn't much chop. I was good but never one of the best guys. I played A's at school and was good at local level, but even under-18s, I was a bit of a battler, a good player without being great," he says of his rise.
"I never had any interest from any other clubs. No interest in my 18s year, 19s year I had Adelaide give me one phone call. From that perspective, I feel like I've come a long way. But I have pretty high standards for myself. Since I've started playing, I know I can play to a good level and know I have improvement in me."
While Western Bulldogs star Tim English is on course to collect a maiden All-Australian blazer in September, no one in the competition has registered more hitouts (695) or hitouts to advantage (202) in 2023 than O'Brien. It hasn't quite been to the level of 2020, but he has been important in helping the Crows improve during season four under Nicks.
"I've been solid without soaring to the heights that I would have liked," he says, giving the kind of personal assessment that isn't surprising when you consider the standards he lives his life by.
"Probably been a little bit like the team; inconsistent throughout games and throughout the year. But overall it is certainly not the level I think I can get to in terms of my work around stoppage and my marking. Still not the level I want to get to."
Showdowns don't require any extra incentive to be must-watch. Yet this one has more on the line than usual, not just for Adelaide but also for the Power. If Port Adelaide is going to secure a home qualifying final, they must continue to win given Brisbane is breathing down its neck.
Adelaide won four games in succession early in the season and reached the mid-season bye on track to return to September for the first time since 2017 at 7-6. But since then, things haven't gone to plan. The Crows have dropped four of five to sit in 13th with five games to play. O'Brien knows the equation is simple: they simply can't lose from here.
"There is a lot riding on it," he says. "We've made it very hard for ourselves with a few results that haven't gone our way in close games. We let a few slip that we probably should have won, so it is backs against the wall.
"We have to win every game to play finals. There is a lot more riding on it, that's for sure. We'd love to knock them off and upset their run to a top-two spot. There is always a lot on the line, but this week in particular."
