Country boy to Carlton future star

On a sunny weekend in his country home town of Ararat, Carlton up and comer Tom Williamson sits out on his deck overlooking the front yard he can remember playing sport on with his sisters as a youngster.

It is here, an hour past the established footy town of Ballarat, that Williamson found his love for the sport that he now has the joy of calling his full-time job.

As a keen onlooker of the Ararat Rats, where his Dad, Alistar, is a club legend, he was always around footy from an early age, so when Auskick and the local under-13 league came around, Williamson was more than ready to begin his journey.

“Early on I found that footy was my one love and that’s really what I wanted to do,” he said of playing junior footy in Ararat.

Source: The Ararat Advertiser

In the small country town of around 9,000 people, Williamson was a talented athlete. He was a regular member of the Wimmera Football League junior interleague squads, as well as Ararat basketball and cricket teams. A man with many bows, he had plenty of options to choose from.

But it was footy that eventually won him over, as he said even when he wasn’t sure about which path to take, it was always one of his favorites.

“Footy wasn’t always my number one thing, but I always had it in the back of my mind … I liked the high speed,” he said.

As footy took preference, a chance to challenge himself at higher levels both on the field and off it arose, leading to him deciding at just 13 to move in with his Nan, Lenore, in Ballarat, and attend St Patrick’s College.

It was here that everything seemed to click. Sitting back in his chair on the deck of his old home with the sun beaming through onto his face, Williamson looks back fondly on the journey that this move took him on.

As he calls it, he received some ‘old school ways’ of doing things from his Nan, but she was one of the biggest factors in his success as a player and his growth as a person.

This support from home, including his parents, Alister and Janeen back in Ararat, made for a great environment to allow him to succeed. At 15, he was selected for the North Ballarat Rebels under-16 squad, playing the three carnival games and being selected to try out for Victoria Country. For the first time in his junior career however, he was cut from a team, but it drove him to get to another level in terms of his play.

“I learnt then what it was going to take … so I decided I was going to have a real crack at it,” he said of his AFL ambitions heading forward.

As a 17-year-old he had a growth spurt, helping him play ten games in the TAC Cup competition for the North Ballarat Rebels, setting himself up for a big top age season heading into the draft.

In his top age season he started to lift weights and suddenly became a tall, big bodied, running half-back flanker. His quickness, size and raking left foot led to a Victoria Country invite again after an impressive start to the season.

Unlike the under-16’s, he impressed enough to make the final playing squad, and started in three of the four games in the National Championships. It was after his impressive form there, and a great finish to the season that the AFL suddenly became a realistic goal for Williamson.

With 10-13 clubs in contact with him in different ways, Williamson said it was a very exciting time. When the night came and he was selected with pick 61 to Carlton, he was ecstatic.

“Everyone was so excited, and I was just pumped. A few tears were shed,” he said of his initial emotions once picked up.

Since then, as has happened his whole career, he has continued to improve in leaps and bounds. He made his debut in just round three of his first year at the MCG against Essendon, and played a further 14 games that 2017 season.

Source: Carlton Football Club

The 2018 season has been a rollercoaster, missing the first quarter of the year with back problems, returning for two games but re-injuring himself and being sat on the sidelines for most likely the rest of 2018.

“It gets frustrating, but you just have to work through it and keep telling yourself why you love the job,” he said of his recent injury run.

One thing is for sure, they breed them tough in the country, so no doubt Williamson will be back and firing in 2019 and into the future for the Carlton Football Club.