ON MEETING his new Hawthorn teammates a day after being drafted, Jarrod Kayler-Thomson came across a familiar face.

Kayler-Thomson was doing a recovery session when he caught up with Jordan Lewis, his teammate at the Geelong Falcons in 2003.

The two have taken vastly different paths to the AFL but now find themselves teammates once again.

Six years ago Lewis was a bottom-age player at the Falcons before becoming a top 10 draft pick the following year. He has since gone on to play more than 100 games for the Hawks, including a premiership.

In that time, Kayler-Thomson played senior footy at Mansfield in country Victoria, before moving to the other side of the country to pursue his dream, where he underwent the agony of several drafts while studying to become a teacher.

Now with half a decade of WAFL football with the Perth Demons under his belt and his teaching degree, the 25-year-old is starting out his AFL career on Hawthorn’s rookie list.

It is a unique path to his dream and Kayler-Thomson knows that if it weren’t for a change in the rookie draft rules to allow mature-age players, he would never have got the chance.

“It’s fallen my way. They didn’t want to take a punt on an older player last year but that new rule came in which was pretty fortunate for me,” Kayler-Thomson told hawthornfc.com.au.

“Instead of young kids missing out at 18 or 19, they think that is the end of the world but it shows that if you persist and keep playing consistently you are still a chance.”

Kayler-Thomson came under notice by West Australian-based Hawks recruiter Gary Buckenara. In the last year of his teaching degree, he did a placement at Wesley College where Buckenara was the head of football. Kayler-Thomson was coaching the school’s year nine team and got to know Buckenara who was also watching him on the weekends with Perth.

While he always had the ambition to play at AFL level, he was not putting all his eggs in one basket and even as recently as September signed on for a permanent position with Wesley.

All that changed when the Hawks took him with their second rookie draft pick.

“I spoke to the school when I was drafted. They were excellent and really supportive. I’m sure it stuffs them around a bit with me saying I was going to go if I got drafted,” he said.

“They never once put pressure on me to find out what was happening and as soon as I found out Hawthorn took me I spoke to Wesley straight away to thank them for their support.”

Kayler-Thomson is wise enough not to completely throw away his teaching career just yet and is hoping to secure a part-time position with a Melbourne school.

He is hungry to succeed in his new career but knows he has more to fall back on than most rookies.

“Having finished a degree and then to get a crack at an AFL career, it’s not that there’s no pressure but I know I’ve got something there if things don’t work out,” he said.

“As an 18-year-old, what I know now, to think I might have been ready at 18 I was nowhere near it. It does help but it does cut down your window of opportunity a little bit too. But you’ve got to make the most of a fantastic opportunity.”