Jayden Hunt (born 3 April 1995) is a professional

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

er playing for the

West Coast Eagles The West Coast Eagles are a professional Australian rules football club based in Perth, Western Australia. The club was founded in 1986 and first competed in 1987 as one of two expansion teams in the Australian Football League (AFL), then known ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the pre-eminent professional sports, professional competition of Australian rules football. It was originally named the Victorian Football League (VFL) and was founded in 1896 as a breakaway competition ...

(AFL), having previously played for the

Melbourne Football Club The Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Demons or colloquially the Dees, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier comp ...

. A defender, Hunt plays primarily on the half-back flank with the ability to also play on the

wing A wing is a type of fin that produces both Lift (force), lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform (aeronautics), planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-d ...

. He was born into an Australian rules football family with both his great-uncle and uncle playing in the Victorian Football League (now the Australian Football League). He played his final junior football year in school sports and did not play any football at under-18 level. Despite this, he was recruited by the Melbourne Football Club with the fifty-seventh selection in the 2013 AFL draft. After persistent injuries in his first two years, he made his AFL debut during the 2016 season.

Early life

Hunt was born into a football family with his great-uncle, Harold Rumney, playing 186 games in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football competition in Australia operated by the Australian Football League (AFL) as a second-tier, regional, semi-professional competition. It includes teams from clubs based in east ...

(now the Australian Football League) for the

Collingwood Football Club The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed the Magpies or colloquially the Pies, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite competition. ...

and

Carlton Football Club The Carlton Football Club, nicknamed the Blues, is a professional Australian rules football club based at Princes Park (stadium), Princes Park in Carlton North, Victoria, Carlton North, an inner suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. The c ...

, including four premierships with Collingwood between 1927 and 1930; and his uncle, Andrew Moir, played 73 matches for the

from 1977–1981. He played under 16 level football with the Hampton Rovers Football Club in 2011 before playing school football with

Brighton Grammar School Brighton Grammar School is a private school, private Anglican Church of Australia, Anglican day school for boys, located in Brighton, Victoria, Brighton, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Founded in ...

. Playing in the

Associated Public Schools of Victoria The Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS) are a group of eleven independent schools in Victoria, Australia, similar to the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools in New South Wales, the Great Public Schools Association in Quee ...

(APS) competition during his draft year, he did not play in the

TAC Cup The Talent League (also known as the Coates Talent League under naming rights and previously as the NAB League and TAC Cup) is an under-19 Australian rules football representative competition based in Melbourne and run by the Australian Foot ...

or under 18 championships that year. His only representative match for the year was the APS vs. Associated Grammar Schools of Victoria (AGSV) match.

AFL career

Playing just the one representative match for the year, Hunt was drafted by the

with their third selection and fifty-seventh overall in the 2013 national draft, he was the only player in the draft to not play any football at under 18-level. He was labelled as the draft smoky and ''

Herald Sun The ''Herald Sun'' is a Conservatism, conservative daily tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia, published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of the American Rupert Murdoch, Murd ...

'' journalist, Sam Landsberger, noted he was "plucked from relative obscurity". After playing the first six matches in the

(VFL) for Melbourne's affiliate team, the Casey Scorpions in 2014, he was sidelined for over a year after suffering from a back injury and a broken jaw which he injured in June 2015. He returned to the VFL in July and played the remainder of the season including the elimination final loss against . Hunt had his first uninterrupted pre-season in the lead-up to the 2016 season and played the first two matches of the NAB Challenge. He made his AFL debut in the thirty-five point win against in round four at the

Melbourne Cricket Ground The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as the 'G, is a sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadium in the Southern Hemisphere, the Lis ...

. Regarded for his speed, he received high praise during his eleventh match in round fifteen against , which was described as his break-out match by '' Fox Sports Australia'' journalist, Julian De Stoop, and then-Melbourne coach, Paul Roos, stated it was "as good a 12-possession game as e'dever seen". The next week, he recorded a then-career-high twenty-nine disposals and eight inside-50s in the thirty-two point win against at TIO Stadium. Despite being eligible for the AFL Rising Star, he entered the final round of the season without a nomination, which caused Paul Roos to criticise the Rising Star process, stating "it would be a travesty if he did not receive a nomination" and proclaim he "could be the best young player in the competition". He ultimately missed out on a nomination, which led to ''Fox Sports Australia'' naming him the unluckiest player to miss a nomination. He did not miss a match following his debut and he finished with nineteen matches for the season. His season was rewarded with the Harold Ball Memorial Trophy as Melbourne's best young player, and an eleventh-place finish in the

best and fairest In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...

count. Hunt struggled to maintain a place in the Melbourne side over the following years, only being listed as an emergency in Melbourne's 2021 grand final win. The following year, Hunt exercised his rights as a free agent and moved to .

Statistics

''Updated to the end of the 2022 season''. , - ,

2014 The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...

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2015 2015 was designated by the United Nations as: * International Year of Light * International Year of Soil __TOC__ Events January * January 1 – Lithuania officially adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas, and becomes ...

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2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

, , , , 29 , 19 , , 3 , , 1 , , 159 , , 137 , , 296 , , 59 , , 41 , , 0.2 , , 0.1 , , 8.4 , , 7.2 , , 15.6 , , 3.1 , , 2.2 , - ,

2017 2017 was designated as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by the United Nations General Assembly. Events January * January 1 – Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa Claus opens fire at the ...

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2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...

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2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

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2020 The year 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of even ...

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2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

, , , , 29 , 20 , , 2 , , 3 , , 179 , , 95 , , 274 , , 64 , , 49 , , 0.1 , , 0.2 , , 9.0 , , 4.8 , , 13.7 , , 3.2 , , 2.5 , - ,

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

, , , , 29 , 20 , , 0 , , 2 , , 134 , , 66 , , 200 , , 52 , , 27 , , 0.0 , , 0.1 , , 6.7 , , 3.3 , , 10.0 , , 2.6 , , 1.4 , - class=sortbottom ! colspan=3 , Career ! 114 !! 43 !! 25 !! 959 !! 565 !! 1524 !! 369 !! 253 !! 0.4 !! 0.2 !! 8.4 !! 5.0 !! 13.4 !! 3.2 !! 2.2 Notes

Honours and achievements

Team *

McClelland Trophy The McClelland Trophy is an Australian rules football club championship trophy, awarded each year to the club with the best aggregate performance across the Australian Football League (AFL) and AFL Women's (AFLW) seasons. The trophy was inaugur ...

():

Individual * Harold Ball Memorial Trophy: 2016 * 22under22 team: 2017

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hunt, Jayden 1995 births Living people Melbourne Football Club players Australian rules footballers from Victoria (state) People educated at Brighton Grammar School Casey Demons players People from the City of Bayside West Coast Eagles players 21st-century Australian sportsmen