Ben McEvoy was an outstanding AFL footballer who played 252 games over a 15-year career, including two premierships with the Hawthorn Football Club. He was drafted by St Kilda and has a funny story about the draft, and when he was traded from St Kilda to Hawthorn, he didn’t know it was going to happen until it did.
Ben was passionate about Football but has what I’d consider a greater passion for Farming. He says he’ll be a lifelong Farmer and just loves it. The money-earning side of Football allowed him to enter into the Farming game; without that, he said, buying Land would have been a lot more difficult.
Ben talks about how he fumbled away at things for the first part of his Football career before the penny dropped about 8 or 9 years in.
Being a first generation Farmer meant he had to learn a lot, and this is where his brother-in-law, Paul Vance, came into the picture. Paul became his mentor of sorts and had the Farm next door. He looked after things whilst Ben was doing his Football thing in Melbourne.
He started buying Land about 5 years into his footy career and said juggling both was difficult, and he tried to get to the Farm as often as he could. He said some of the things he learnt in footy he has implemented into his way of Farming.
You’ll get from the interview that he is a humble bloke and very grateful for the opportunities he got in Football. He made the footy thing work, and he’s hell-bent on making the Farming thing work as well. Another takeaway that you will notice is that he’s a ripper bloke too.
It was an enjoyable interview we did on a hill on his property, in the Ute, of all places.
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