Brendan Fevola was recruited to Carlton Football Club with selection No. 38 overall in the 1998 AFL Draft. Early in his career he showed signs of being a brilliant kick of the ball and a prospective key position player at full forward. During a pre-season game on 31 December 1999 against Collingwood (promoted as the “Millennium Match”), he kicked 12 goals.
However, Brendan Fevola struggled to maintain form over the next few years, playing in 39 games and kicking 66 goals between 2000 and 2002, with noticeably poor body language on-field as well as causing bad publicity through incidents off-field. Carlton coach Wayne Brittain had intended to trade or delist Fevola at the end of the 2002 season; however, after Carlton’s poor season (in which it won the wooden spoon) Brittain was himself sacked, and incoming coach Denis Pagan reversed Brittain’s decision.
Pagan’s arrival had an immediate impact on Fevola’s discipline and form. In Round 5, 2003, Brendan Fevola kicked 8 goals against the Kangaroos, helping win the game for Carlton and launching himself into the eyes of AFL viewers. Fevola’s unkempt dreadlocks and extroverted personality in the media earned him the nickname “The Shag” by fans.
In 2012, Fevola signed to play home matches with Yarrawonga in the Ovens & Murray Football League. Interest in Fevola’s presence was a significant financial boon for both Yarrawonga and the O&M in 2012, with an increase in attendances and gate takings across the league compared with previous seasons; such was Fevola’s ability to draw a crowd that some rival clubs paid Fevola to play against them in Yarrawonga’s away matches. Fevola remained at Yarrawonga for four seasons from 2012 until 2015, kicking 357 goals from 65 matches and being part of back-to-back premierships in 2012 and 2013. He was coach of the O&M’s interleague representative team in 2014 and 2015, served as a playing co-coach of Yarrawonga in 2015, and holds the record for most goals in a game at Yarrawonga, kicking 16 goals in a match in late 2014. Fevola will return to Melbourne and play for Deer Park in the Western Region Football League from 2016.
During his post-AFL career, Brendan Fevola also played once-off matches for several local clubs around the country, earning appearance fees which the clubs financed by the large crowds he could draw. Among the clubs was former TANFL club New Norfolk, now in Tasmania’s Southern Football League, where in 2012 he drew a record home crowd for the club and kicked eighteen goals to set a new club record; he returned for another game in 2013, this time kicking sixteen goals.
