Shane O’Sullivan has, it’s fair to say, pretty much seen it all in football . . . and now, in the lead-in to the 2025 AFL draft, ‘Shaneo’ has agreed to tell all in terms of his days as a Carlton recruiter, and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to get the next great footballing talent through the door.
In a four-episode podcast series, 'From the Vault', Shane revisits some of the most outlandish recruiting tales of which he was part, from as far back as the pre-draft days of the late 1970s.
Stories include:
- the first player Shane ever recruited;
- League football’s last great recruiting coup;
- a future Carlton Premiership player who literally walked in off the street, and another who was recruited despite the Senior Coach’s reservations;
- the man who quite literally moved house to ensure his son lived in Carlton’s recruiting zone;
- the prospective recruit who joined Carlton’s end-of-season footy trip and then said ‘no’;
- the one who got away on draft day ’94; and
- the scarcely believable trade with Port Adelaide that ultimately fell through.
Thesedays the Spirit of Carlton Manager, Shane also casts his mind back to Grand Final day 1979 when he coached the team (albeit briefly) in the dying minutes of the nail-biting contest; and he recounts the moment he intervened in that famous dust-up involving two senior coaches at quarter-time of the 1980 Qualifying Final.
