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Nestled on the Gold Coast’s south side sits a blossoming football factory set to take over the AFL.
Palm Beach Currumbin State High School (PBC) has long been renowned for its rugby league prowess, having educated bona fide NRL stars Tom Dearden, Jahrome Hughes, Keano Kini and Jamal Fogarty.
But another wave of Aussie rules phenoms will soon land on the radar of AFL followers across the country, according to the school’s head of sports excellence Neil Mackay.
Dylan Patterson has been labelled “one of the best-looking athletic specimens you’ll come across”. Credit: via Getty Images
PBC have stormed to 14 of the past 20 junior and senior Queensland schoolboy titles to announce themselves as the leading juggernaut of the code, with six 2025 graduates entering the draft this year.
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While in the early days of the PBC sporting excellence program – established in 1996 – rugby league dominated, Mackay has witnessed the Australian code flourish as the introduction of the Gold Coast Suns’ academy provided a local elite pathway.
“I used to watch rugby league have 60 kids trialling to get in, and I’d have six. Those six, as long as they were playing club footy, would get a gig,” Mackay recalled.
“It took 10 to 15 years to get some traction, and then since that period it’s just growing and growing. Then the Suns came in and with the academy, so there was a direct pathway.
“The combination of both was the perfect storm. If you look back, we didn’t have [state championships] in schools until 10 years ago – we were always chasing.
“The AFL now has a really strong presence in schools. If your code wants to be successful, you need a healthy club environment, but also a healthy presence in schools.”
Ahead of the 2024 season, two of the school’s elite talents – Jed Walter and Will Graham – were brought into the Suns’ fold as first round draft picks, and now loom as key figures in coach Damian Hardwick’s intended transformation of the club from cellar dwellers to premiership contenders.
The fruits of that were on show this season, with the Suns reaching their maiden finals campaign after 14 years in the wilderness, defeating Fremantle by a point in the elimination final before being defeated by eventual champions, the Brisbane Lions.
The game’s surge at a grassroots level in the region has coincided with its infiltration into a typical rugby league heartland, with AFL legend and former marquee Sun, Gary Ablett Junior, believing that revolution would only continue with further success at the top level.
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“I’ve known for the last four or five years the club was heading in the right direction,” Ablett Jnr said.
“I think every game the players are getting into them is fast-tracking their development, but to be able to experience finals football – which is a different brand of football – they’ll take a lot out of that.
“You’re seeing the strength of the academy up here and the players coming through, that always helps. I think we’ve seen over the last four or five years that kids have come through the academy and are playing at the top level, and they’re very talented kids.”
While the academy systems at clubs outside of Victoria have drawn the ire of pundits, with many claiming it has distorted the draft by enabling academy clubs to match rival bids, AFL great Luke Hodge threw his support behind the initiatives to ensure elite talent is drawn to the game – particularly in non-traditional football markets.
The Brisbane Lions’ academy – which includes Hodge’s son Cooper, who made his VFL debut this year – nurtured current club captain Harris Andrews as well as Sam Marshall and Ty Gallop, with top-ten draft prospect Daniel Annable expected to arrive in 2026.
Hodge, who won three flags with Hawthorn before moving to the Lions, felt the academies had a crucial role to play in the game’s prosperity in states outside the Melbourne epicentre.
That became clear to him after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the competition to be relocated to Queensland.
“We used to go do school footy clinics, and they used to have either their school tops or Broncos tops on. Post-Covid ... there were so many kids playing school footy and would come with their Richmond, Geelong, Lions [shirts] and that grew,” Hodge said.
“I’ve personally seen the development of Coop and his mates just through the academy. A lot of the kids go to junior football and have to wait until under-18s or are on a list before they get excellent [elite] coaching.
“I think it’s great to try and grab kids who could go to basketball or league or union, and give them an opportunity to step into an AFL program with really good AFL coaches.”
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