Nathan Grima (born 5 August 1985) is a former 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 who played for the

North Melbourne Football Club The North Melbourne Football Club, nicknamed the Kangaroos or colloquially the Roos, is a professional Australian rules football club. The men's team competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), and the women's team in the AFL Women's (AF ...

and

Essendon Football Club The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed the Bombers or colloquially the Dons, is a professional Australian rules football club that plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the game's premier competition. The club was formed by the McCrac ...

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).

Early career

Originally from Tasmania, Grima played for the

Tassie Mariners The Tassie Mariners is an under-18 Australian rules football club representing the state of Tasmania. They currently play in the AFL Under 18 Championships and also played in the Victorian statewide under-18s competition (then known as the TAC ...

, South Launceston, the

Tasmanian Devils The Tasmanian devil (''Sarcophilus harrisii''; palawa kani: ''purinina'') is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae. It was formerly present across mainland Australia, but became extinct there around 3,500 years ago; it is now conf ...

and

Central District Central District may refer to: Places * Central District (Botswana) * Central district, Plovdiv, Bulgaria * Central District, Xiamen, China, now Siming District, Fujian * Central, Hong Kong, also called Central District * List of Central District ...

, including in their 2007

SANFL The South Australian National Football League, or SANFL ( or ''S-A-N-F-L''), is an Australian rules football league based in the Australian state of South Australia. It is also the state's sports governing body, governing body for the sport. ...

premiership team. Grima was then rookie-listed by North Melbourne in the 2008 AFL Rookie Draft.

AFL career

Grima impressed in early training sessions and looked in line for a promotion before hyper-extending his knee in a marking exercise. The injury prematurely ended his season and raised doubts about his ability to retain a spot on the list. Despite this injury setback, North Melbourne promoted Grima to the senior list before the start of the 2009 season and the versatile defender was quick to show his potential, holding down a spot at full-back for North's reserves team,

Werribee Werribee is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the local government area of the City of Wyndham. Werribee recorded a population of 50,027 at the 2021 census. Werrib ...

in the VFL in the early part of the season. His strong form led to Grima making his debut in round eight against Geelong. He only missed two games for the rest of the season and combined well in defence with Scott Thompson and Scott McMahon. Grima scored his first goal in AFL football on Saturday, 17 August 2013 against Essendon at Etihad Stadium. An injury to Leigh Adams resulted in Grima being moved forward for the final quarter of the match. Having not scored a goal after 71 AFL games, he crumbed the ball from a marking contest involving Robbie Tarrant, and snapped a left-foot goal midway through the last quarter. The defender embarked on a wild celebration, being mobbed by teammates who came from all areas of the ground to congratulate him. Had he failed to score, he would have equalled a club record, with former player Ted Larsen having a 72-game drought before scoring a goal. In July 2015, Grima had announced his retirement, effective immediately, due to a back injury. Grima had been unable to fully recover from the injury that had seen him undergo surgery on his back on two previous occasions. Specialists had advised him that he would need a third operation, this time to fuse a disc in his spine. In February 2016, Grima returned to the AFL after signing with the

as a top-up player due to the club's supplements controversy.

Coaching career

In October 2018,

Sturt Football Club The Sturt Football Club, nicknamed The Double Blues, is a semi-professional Australian rules football club based in the suburb of Unley, South Australia, which plays in the South Australian National Football League. Founded in 1901 by the Stur ...

announced its appointment of Grima as senior coach for 2019. He was previously the coach of Strathmore in the Premier Division of the Essendon District Football League. He now coaches Glenunga Football Club in the Adelaide Amateur Footy League.

Statistics

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2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...

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2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

, , 17 , , 17 , , 0 , , 1 , , 181 , , 137 , , 318 , , 99 , , 24 , , 0.0 , , 0.1 , , 10.6 , , 8.1 , , 18.7 , , 5.8 , , 1.4 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

, , 17 , , 12 , , 0 , , 0 , , 111 , , 77 , , 188 , , 50 , , 17 , , 0.0 , , 0.0 , , 9.3 , , 6.4 , , 15.7 , , 4.2 , , 1.4 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2012 2012 was designated as: *International Year of Cooperatives *International Year of Sustainable Energy for All Events January *January 4 – The Cicada 3301 internet hunt begins. * January 12 – Peaceful protests begin in the R ...

, , 17 , , 13 , , 0 , , 0 , , 132 , , 88 , , 220 , , 88 , , 31 , , 0.0 , , 0.0 , , 10.2 , , 6.8 , , 16.9 , , 6.8 , , 2.4 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2013 2013 was the first year since 1987 to contain four unique digits (a span of 26 years). 2013 was designated as: *International Year of Water Cooperation *International Year of Quinoa Events January * January 5 – 2013 Craig, Alask ...

, , 17 , , 17 , , 1 , , 0 , , 186 , , 84 , , 270 , , 91 , , 35 , , 0.1 , , 0.0 , , 10.9 , , 4.9 , , 15.9 , , 5.4 , , 2.1 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

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 ...

, , 17 , , 14 , , 0 , , 0 , , 159 , , 71 , , 230 , , 69 , , 23 , , 0.0 , , 0.0 , , 11.4 , , 5.1 , , 16.4 , , 4.9 , , 1.6 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

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 ...

, , 55 , , 2 , , 0 , , 0 , , 16 , , 11 , , 27 , , 10 , , 2 , , 0.0 , , 0.0 , , 8.0 , , 5.5 , , 13.5 , , 5.0 , , 1.0 , - class="sortbottom" ! colspan=3, Career ! 88 ! 1 ! 1 ! 909 ! 553 ! 1462 ! 472 ! 169 ! 0.0 ! 0.0 ! 10.3 ! 6.3 ! 16.6 ! 5.4 ! 1.9

Media

Grima has appeared as a guest presenter on

Fox Footy Fox Footy (stylised as FOX FOOTY) is an Australian rules football subscription television channel dedicated to screening Australian rules football matches and related programming. It is owned by Fox Sports Australia operated out of its Melbou ...

's light entertainment television series '' Bounce''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Grima, Nathan North Melbourne Football Club players Werribee Football Club players South Launceston Football Club players Central District Football Club players Tasmanian Devils Football Club players Tassie Mariners players Australian rules footballers from Tasmania 1985 births Living people Australian people of Maltese descent Essendon Football Club players 21st-century Australian sportsmen