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“In hindsight”: Maverick Weller’s one major regret
Jaiden Sciberras • June 19th, 2025 3:07 pm
Handed a rare opportunity to join an AFL side at 17, a young Tassie-born star Maverick Weller made a decision he would later come to regret.
In preparation for their entry to the AFL, the Gold Coast Suns in 2009 were permitted the rights to sign 12 players born between January and April of 1992 (17 years of age).
These players would head to the Gold Coast to commence their training with the club, joining their VFL program, overseen by soon-to-be senior coach Guy McKenna, before being introduced to the AFL system in the side’s inaugural season in 2011.
Although injured throughout 2009, the Burnie Dockers’ young gun Weller was scooped up by the club alongside teammate Luke Russell, immediately elevated into the leadership group in the club’s debut VFL season before joining Gary Ablett Jnr, Campbell Brown, Nathan Bock and Michael Rischitelli as part of the inaugural Gold Coast Suns’ leadership group in 2011.
Despite his rapid ascension within the walls of the club, Weller would only amount 32 games for the Suns before being delisted as a 21-year-old in 2013.
While the opportunity to leap into the AFL program was one he couldn’t pass up, the 123-gamer - who also played at St Kilda and Richmond - certainly would have trekked his journey rather differently if he had his time again.
“In hindsight, I would have loved to have gone through that draft process and gone to a club where it probably wasn’t as saturated with so much young talent,” Weller told SEN Tassie.
“They wanted to give everyone a go and you jump over what you actually need to do when you get to an AFL club. You need to do a bit of an apprenticeship under some established leadership and learn off some great players.
“I always look back on that thinking it would have been great to have gone to a Hawthorn or Geelong at that time that were super established and had some great leaders and players of that generation.
“Go there and you’re doing player development with those types of guys and learning off those guys. Our team was thrown together pretty quickly.
“You did get a choice, you could have said, ‘No, I don’t want to go’, but tell a 17-year-old to turn down their first contract opportunity. It was a good contract; three-year deal and you get out of school early.
“I was desperate to play footy. It was an interesting time for me; I was coming back off a pretty serious injury. I had three bouts of surgery to fix this and up until then I’d never been injured as a kid. It was pretty chronic, the pain that I was in.
“Early, it was pretty ‘rush, rush, rush’ trying to get back, and before you knew it, it was two or three years, and it was all over.”
While Weller is not having a direct dig at the club his younger brother Lachie now calls home, he did admit his frustration in those early years.
“The club in itself was great; I met some lifetime friends there. It was a bit frustrating too, the rush that they were in to get this team up and going,” he continued.
“(They had) a coach that hadn’t coached at that level before that I’m not a massive fan of. I think at the moment, Lachie’s there now and it feels like it’s rebounded and it’s on the right path. As I said, I probably would have preferred to go to a different club and carve out a bit of a premiership (run).”
After his delisting, Weller joined St Kilda at 23 years of age, the club he would play out 89 of his 123 career games across five seasons.
Following a successful opening two seasons with the Saints, Weller opened up on his time with the Suns, and more specifically their inaugural coach Guy McKenna.
“I was always going to ask for a trade anyway and get out of there because I didn't believe in the club, didn't believe in the coach and just wanted to get out of there to further my footy,” Weller told AFL.com.au in 2015.
“It's been a blessing in disguise.”
McKenna was only able to propel the club to a 12th place finish in 2014 being sacked by the club and replaced by Rodney Eade to commence the 2015 season.
Revisiting his initial statement, Weller stood firm on his belief that McKenna was not the type of coach that the young side required.
“I stand by those comments,” he continued.
“Guy was an interesting person, he used to give feedback with a lot of humour and his critical feedback, he wouldn’t relay it in the right way, he was pretty old school in that sense.
“I had a sense of I didn’t know where I was at. There was stuff going up and vision he would be showing me… I had other people saying that he was in the wrong there and didn’t like some of the stuff he was trying to tell me.
“I was a younger guy; there was a lot of confusion… I think he was under the pump too. Obviously, we weren’t going that well. I just don’t think I was treated that well.”
Joining Richmond in 2019, Weller only managed two games for that season's eventual premiers, but won the VFL premiership with the Tigers before retiring at season's end.
