A feature article by Peter Hanlon, written for the HawkTalk magazine...

David Mirra doesn’t have to look far to see where it comes from. The resilience. The doggedness. The will to keep pushing on no matter what. The belief it will all be worth it in the end.

“My mother was born in Calabria, migrated here with her parents aged seven on a ship that took a month to get here,” he says. “They didn’t have anything, lived in Oakleigh with Mum’s uncle who’d migrated a bit earlier. My grandfather worked factory jobs, double shifts, day, night. My grandmother worked as well, I think sewing in a factory.”

Slowly they built a life for themselves, bought a house, raised a family, put their children through school. By dint of sheer hard work, they made it.

Mirra’s father grew up in another Italian household to migrant parents. At a party one night, Michelangelo (Mick to all) met Maria. Mirra cherishes the support they’ve shown him, hails the lessons he took from his grandparents, gives thanks for an upbringing with a strong Catholic compass that taught him how to interact, instilled the importance of humility. “That’s really important to me.”

Lately he’s had a bit to get his head around, like becoming an AFL footballer nine years after he first nominated for the draft. Then, he was 17 and could imagine nothing else. Now, he’s 26, married, and until November was so fulfilled at work he was contemplating dropping back to local footy and shelving the dream once and for all.

Read: Who's in the mix for Round 4?

Yes, he knows where it’s come from.

“My grandparents didn’t have everything straight away. They came here and worked their backsides off to get a house – to them, buying a house was the dream. The dream for me has always been about playing AFL footy, and I’ve never had the easy road to it. I didn’t think it would happen, but it has. Now it’s about making the most of it.”

Until rookie draft day, Mirra was a member of football’s most populous club – the wannabes who never quite get the chance to prove their worth. He’d carved out a worthy VFL career with Box Hill, won a cherished premiership, been a versatile and valued teammate and leader. Common sense told him it was time to concentrate on his sales and marketing job with New Balance, and time to concede that footy really was just a game.

“I was thinking about pulling the pin, had spoken to about six EFL clubs, but I decided to go around for one more year (with Box Hill) and align myself with a local club that I’d play for the year after. I’d spoken to Balwyn, South Croydon, a few different clubs.”

Pushing football further into his life’s margins would have its benefits. Last winter, he dashed away from work at 4.30pm every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, trained until 7.30, did leg weights for an hour and got home around 9. More weights, swim and bike sessions were squeezed in around work on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and after Sunday games and a pool recovery he’d fall through the door about 7pm. “Then it was pretty much straight to bed for work Monday morning.”

He embraced the fullness of his world. He’d started with New Balance answering phones, emails and fielding customer complaints, rose to be a customer service manager with a team of eight, and after another promotion last year was relishing building relationships with key accounts including Melbourne FC and Tennis Australia. “It was a good role, one that gave me some good skills and I took some really good learnings from it. I was loving it. It’s a great business to work for, good people. I had a bit of flexibility; they were cool with me leaving early for training. The work was challenging, but I learnt a lot about the business and the industry.”

As an Eastern Ranges graduate he’d been gutted not to get drafted, but by his early 20s realised he hadn’t been fit enough or had the endurance to play AFL. Mirra knuckled down, got his work rate up and played consistently good footy. “But it didn’t happen … didn’t happen … didn’t happen.”

He admits there were periods of anger, when he’d look at Hawthorn-listed teammates and think, “I’m better than him coming off an amateur training program, why aren’t they looking at me?” But mostly he was grateful – for what a good club Box Hill was, for the premiership it brought him, for the lessons he took about hard work and reward.

As draft day dawned each year he kept his head down. He’d nominated at 18 and 21, which threw his hat in the ring for three years each time. After that he didn’t bother, and when Graham Wright called a fortnight before the draft he assumed it was to seek intelligence on teammates Sam Switkowski, Chris Jones and Anthony Brolic. No, Wright told him, we’re keen on you.

The bombshell came with a request to put his draft nomination in, and a warning that there were no promises or guarantees. “I said I’d had nine drafts of speaking to clubs for nothing, so I didn’t expect anything.”

He followed the national draft on his phone, was left thinking “here we go again” when nothing came of it, but Wright was soon back on the line flagging a rookie listing. Mirra admits he found himself thinking, “I’m 26, if they weren’t genuinely serious, why would they call?”

Even the moment was fraught. He was preparing for training at Waverley when Box Hill coach Chris Newman called him into his office and told him to take a look at the screen. It read, “Pick 24 – David Mirra (Box Hill) to Fremantle”. “I thought, $#@! I’m off to Freo!”

Newman assured him there had been a glitch, that he’d actually just been drafted by Hawthorn. Elation and many hugs followed, as well as a breath-catching moment where he excused himself, wandered outside and sat alone trying to take it all in. He walked back into the Ricoh Centre and straight into the arms of his new coach, Alastair Clarkson.

Mates were flabbergasted, sending each other messages as the news spread that simply read, “Mirra?” Only his fiancé, Rachel-Lee, knew he’d even nominated. Bizarrely, after all those years of wanting and waiting, they had to ask themselves if it was worth the risk.

“It’s a massive change in her world too. We’d made a commitment together, bought a house, I had a secure job. We were comfortable and tracking in the right direction. Now, I come into a situation where I’m vulnerable in a way – it could be for one year, could be for five. Who knows where it ends up? If it finishes at the end of next year, what am I going to do for work?”

Immediately they fell into Hawthorn’s embrace, and came away from a dinner at Clarkson’s house that was attended by coaches, support staff, administrators and their wives and partners knowing they’ve made the right call. They will marry in March, the day after a pre-season game against Carlton, but already feel part of a new family.

For Mirra, perversely it now seems as if there are more hours in the day, not less. Training alone he used to push himself and get the work done. Now, everything he does is coached and analysed, geared towards an optimum outcome. The intensity and workload of pre-season training was challenging, but offset by the focus on recovery, the opportunity to get more sleep, the absence of stress about work.

Just before the Christmas break assistant coach Darren Glass asked, “How are you feeling Mizz?” Mirra reckons his reply – “Amazing!” – took Glass by surprise. “He thought I was being sarcastic. But my body feels good, I’ve lost three or four kilos, I’ve come in today and I’ve got weights at 7am, massage at 8, lines at 9. I’m not getting to a computer and stressing about where a certain product is, stressing about release dates, stressing why a particular product isn’t on site.”

His expectations are crystal clear. “Of course I’m here to play senior footy. If I didn’t think I could, I wouldn’t be here. The club thinks I can as well – they wouldn’t draft me at 26 just to play VFL, they know I can do that.”

Now he faces a journey of small milestones, boxes to be ticked before the dream really does come true. The concentration and focus of those around him, the focus each player takes into every training session, has been emboldening. It’s an environment he wasn’t ready for at 18, but now revels in.

He laughs at the prospect of missing his “old life”, thinking out loud about the large pizza on a Sunday night after a game, the couple of beers he might have had when football and work permitted. “I’ll happily give away the pizza and the beers if it means I can play one AFL game.”

After so long waiting it can all seem a bit surreal. Mirra’s first task as a Hawthorn footballer was to get a new passport so he could attend a training camp in New Zealand. If he’d been filling out the form a week earlier, under “Occupation” he’d have put “Sales and Marketing”. Now, it reads “Athlete”.

No matter what happens next, after all the working and waiting, that’s some reward.