Draft gem sparkles in Simpson's desert

BIG WRAPS: Yalgoo's Joshua Simpson is expected to be a first round draft pick in the upcoming AFL draft. Picture: Daniel Wilkins Source: PerthNow

BIG INFLUENCE: Josh Simpson with his grandma, Margaret Simpson, who has brought him up since the age of two weeks. Picture: Daniel Wilkins Source: PerthNow

THERE'S a popular sticker available at the Yalgoo pub that says: "Where in the hell is Yalgoo?"

If Josh Simpson gets his way, he'll put the tiny Outback town back on the map more than a century after the heady days of the gold rush.

About 500km north-east of Perth, the outpost of about 100 residents is bursting with pride ahead of Thursday's national draft.

Simpson is expected to be the first West Australian chosen - somewhere during the first round - and has even rocketed into top 10 contention.

In the red dirt on the edge of his hometown, we're at a photo shoot with the affable teenager who looms as WA's next football gun.

The setting sun brings some relief from the blazing heat, but little from the swarm of flies that are back on your face as soon as you swipe them away.

The 18-year-old first points out the animal footprints that decorate the soft dirt at our feet, identifying one trail as kangaroo and one as goat, before showing off his barefoot skills with an impromptu kick-to-kick.

The first thing you notice is that his non-preferred left foot is as good as his natural right, and his kicking action off his left side is somehow more elegant to watch. When a goanna threatens to interrupt proceedings, he's quick to assure a couple of city visitors we have nothing to worry about.

"Their first instinct is to run, because they're fast," he said.

Simpson, a proud Yamatji man with plenty of experience in both hunting and eating roos, emus and goannas from the area, says this particular goanna is a well-known adversary.

"We tried catching him before, but he's just a bit too slick for us," he said.

"Sometimes if we're fast enough, we just catch them and grab it by the tail. One day we killed like six goannas.

"Once you cook them it looks like chicken. It's beautiful, but the best part is the tail. Everyone fights for the tail, so if you killed the goanna, you eat the tail."

Simpson is a young man not so much caught between two worlds, but rather enriched by and grateful for his experiences in both of them.

Having spent three years at a boarding school in Adelaide on a football scholarship and time in Perth this season playing colts for East Fremantle and representing WA in the national under-18s championships, he converses thoughtfully on his double life.

"I've kind of got a switch on me or something," Simpson said. "Once I go back to Perth or wherever, you switch and you're living that life. You come back here, and you switch again. Coming back home, I kind of get back into my old ways.

"Both sides are a lot different. Sometimes our fridges aren't even really that full of food. They're just making it through the week, low on money and that, so being drafted would be good.

"I owe my grandmother a lot, so hopefully once I'm drafted I can give back to her and also give back to the people in my life and help them out."

He says he was "given" to his maternal grandmother, Margaret Simpson, when he was two weeks old and he has called her Mum ever since.

Once he greets multiple women with the term Nan, the close-knit nature of life in Yalgoo quickly becomes apparent.

Simpson, who's been back home for the past two months, proudly explains there are 30 or 40 homes in town and he's welcome in virtually every one of them.

"The whole town is basically my family," he said.

"There's kind of two big families: the Hodders and the Simpsons and my Dad's a Hodder and my Mum's a Simpson, so that kind of put me between two big families.

"It's a quiet little place and I like quiet. I'm with the family I've always grown up with and my heart just knows that it's home.

"And it keeps you out of trouble. In the city, I've got a lot of family that likes to go out at night and a lot like to party, so I like to be out here where I'm out of mischief and out of trouble."

Simpson's standout result in the kicking accuracy test at the recent draft camp - his score of 29/30 was the equal highest - might have something to do with his upbringing.

His childhood was spent playing barefoot on the street and in a local playground, with a set of monkey bars with openings of about 1m used as the goalposts.

"That kind of made us be accurate kicks," he said.

"You used to skin your toe here and there, but you'd wake up the next day and want to do it again."

As the day that will change his life forever approaches, it's clear there's nowhere else he'd rather be.

But shocked by the news Western Bulldog Zephaniah Skinner had become the latest in a long line of young Aboriginal players to prematurely quit the AFL to return home, Simpson is adamant he'll cope wherever his draft fate sends him and dreams of having a 10-year career.

"With us Aboriginal kids, I reckon at a young age we need to kind of leave our family a bit," he said.

"When I first boarded, I cried and cried and cried for my family. But once you get over that, you should be used to it. I don't know what's going through their mind sometimes. A lot of players want that opportunity, and they just let it walk out the door. So for me, I'm in a better position than most."

Simpson is also steeled by the toughest period of his life in late 2008.

He was devastated when he was left out of a Sharks' under-16 development squad, despite teammates from his premiership-winning Mullewa under-14s side being included.

"Me being the captain and winning the grand final, best-and-fairest, I kind of thought I'd have a little chance of going and then I missed out," he said.

"I'm fine with it now. As a kid, it was pretty upsetting."

Shortly after that came personal heartbreak as his six-year-old brother Michael was killed in a horrific road accident after being hit by a truck on the highway that runs past town.

All the turmoil prompted him to chase a fresh start and a scholarship at South Australia's Rostrevor College on the recommendation of a friend.

"(The setbacks) happened early in my life, at the age of 14, so I had to take in a lot and I had to leave a lot here," he said.

"It was very hard and I didn't know what to do. I sat down and had a good think about it and decided I'd go over and try something new. That actually made me stronger in myself and my ability, just to take new things on.

"I thought about my young brother - do it for him - and now I'm almost there."

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