FORMER Geelong AFL recruit Todd Grima will play football for home-town club Evandale next season in a major recruiting coup for the NTFA club.
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Grima, 24, now based in Adelaide, could line up for 10 matches with the Eagles.
It will be the first time the former Tassie Mariner and Northern Bomber has played senior footy for the club his dad coached to a premiership.
Grima was picked as an All- Australian under-18 in 2005 and recruited by Geelong in the rookie draft of that year.
He played VFL football with the club for two seasons but never cracked a senior game.
Despite being picked in the 2007 VFL team of the year and finishing third on the VFL goalkickers' list - he was surprisingly delisted by the Cats at the end of the season.
Since that disappointment, he has built a football career with SANFL club Glenelg.
A planned trip with some mates to Europe next year provided the perfect opportunity for Grima to fit in some trips back home to play for Evandale.
"I can't commit myself to SANFL level because of my trip and was looking for alternatives," he said.
"I came down here to watch Evandale's last game this season and all my mates that I grew up with and went to school with were playing here.
"Mum and dad only live 100 metres away and this is where I was brought up.
"I got to talking to Michael Routledge and we were joking about me coming back to play here.
"From that we just kept talking and we worked out I could commit to the first seven games of the season before I go overseas for three months.
"I was lucky enough that Evandale gave me the opportunity to do it - and hopefully when I get back we could be playing finals."
Grima and brothers Nathan, 26, and Alex, 22, have all tried their hand at AFL football.
Nathan is with the Kangaroos while younger brother Alex now plays alongside Todd at Glenelg after being delisted as a Hawthorn rookie in 2008.
With elder sister Hollie a former Australian Opals basketballer, the children of Monty and Christine can lay claim to being Evandale's greatest sporting exports.
Grima said he was excited by the opportunity of coming back home to play some football and would treat his stint with the club seriously while enjoying the experience.
"It was pretty disappointing to get delisted by Geelong and I didn't really see it coming," he said.
"I just got back from an overseas trip and heard there had been heaps of delisting and they were cutting a lot of middle-aged guys.
"I'd had a good season but there was always a doubt - would I go or not - but I thought I'd done enough to stay there.
"When I talked to the coaches they said, `Look you haven't done anyting wrong, there's nothing we don't like with your game.'
"Nathan Ablett had just come, Tommy Hawkins was there along with Cameron Mooney and Henry Playfair - so I was fifth on the list of forwards.
"They said, `You will get an opportunity somewhere else,' so I went and trained with Port and that went well and I thought I was going there.
"But I ended up missing everything.
"It was disappointing but it gave me the opportunity to go to Glenelg. It has set me up with a good job as a commercial real estate agent, and I'm really happy there."
Grima said every year since his AFL delisting there had been talk about him being drafted back to the AFL, including rumoured interest by Greater Western Sydney this season.
But nothing eventuated and he said he no longer gave it consideration.
"I've actually got no interest of getting back into it," he said. "It's not something I aspire to do now.
"But if someone came to me and said `Todd we want you,' of course I'd jump at it."
Describing the SANFL competition as a hard, in-and- under style of footy which he enjoyed, he said he planned to return to play with Glenelg in 2013.
"Alex plays with me at Glenelg and he had a really good year last year and is starting to come on really well," he said.
"If he has a really good year this year someone could probably have a look at him I would have thought and obviously Nathan is going well."
Grima's dad Monty is a legend of the Evandale Football Club having played more than 100 games there.
He was part of the 1977 premiership team and returned as playing coach of the 1992 premiership side.
The grand final photo of that year shows the three young Grima boys in front of the team as mascots.
"There's not much sibiling rivalry between us brothers any more - we like each other more now than we ever have," Grima said.
"We don't live together now and when we speak we are actually interested in what the other is doing.
"But growing up we couldn't actually play a game of footy in the back yard or have a shot of the basketball because it would end up in a full-on fist fight and people crying.
"I don't know of a more competitive family than us - we don't know how to have a friendly game of anything."