‘Spelling mistakes everywhere’: How an email from the heart got this AFL prospect a scholarship

Most prognosticators expect the jack-in-the-box forward, who boasts some of the best aerial highlights of any prospect in this year’s class, to be gone inside the first 15 picks.

The AFL academy member has long arms, a big leap, and ran the 20-metre sprint at the draft combine in a blink-of-the-eye 2.9 seconds. Malady’s aunty also happens to be Nicki Malady, Richmond’s media boss.

Yet not that long ago, the country boy from Bairnsdale had to resort to begging to land a scholarship at Caulfield Grammar.

Malady previously aborted his plans to relocate to Melbourne for school – privately conceding he was not ready to move 280 kilometres away from family – but a standout performance at the AFL under-16 championships on the Gold Coast two years ago stoked the fire again.

He returned home as an All-Australian after being the hero in Victoria Country’s under-16 title win, and told his parents he wanted to apply.

Football was a key driver in Malady’s decision, but he also wanted to prioritise his schooling, given he was weighing up dropping out to be an apprentice electrician if he stayed home.

“All the applications were closed for scholarships, so I sat down and wrote these rogue emails, with spelling mistakes everywhere. It was horrible,” Malady told this masthead, laughing.

“I sent one to Dad, and he’s like, ‘You’ve got to fix all this’. I was like, ‘It’s too late. It’s already sent’.

“I wrote heaps of emails to all the boarding schools in the APS. I was lucky enough that a few got back to me, which were Melbourne Grammar, Scotch [College], and then Caulfield.”

Staff at each of the three institutions rang his dad and cheerily told him it was abundantly obvious that his son’s email was authentic and sincere.

“I just wrote that I was a country boy from Bairnsdale, and I wanted to play footy and better my schooling,” Malady said. “They rang Dad and were like, ‘We can tell this kid’s written it. There’s no AI – it’s truly from the heart’, which was pretty cool.”

After all that, he never met with Melbourne Grammar, and Scotch College pulled out, but Caulfield Grammar came to the party.

Fellow Gippsland Power rising star Marlon Neocleous went to Caulfield, too, which helped Malady’s transition as a boarder, and he never looked back.

It meant more travel at times, but that is nothing new for Malady or many of his Power teammates.