Wayne Carey
AFL Legend
The man they call 'King', Wayne Carey, has certainly earned the title of AFL legend. In 2011 Wayne was voted the Number 1 player of the AFL era by an elite band of his peers, a position that he still holds, while the Herald Sun football writers of the late '90s voted him Player of the Century.
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A dual-premiership captain at North Melbourne, four-time North Melbourne best-and-fairest and seven time All Australian Carey, nicknamed “The King”, or “Duck”, was one of the best centre half forwards to have ever played AFL.
In 2001, he was named as centre half forward and captain of North Melbourne’s team of the century and in 2008 was named as Australian football’s “greatest ever player”, as part of a list of the top 50 players of all time, in the book The Australian Game of Football, which was released by the AFL to celebrate 150 years of Australian rules football.
Wayne played 272 games and kicked 727 goals from his debut in 1989 till his premature retirement from the game he dominated after round 12 of 2004 with a disc-related neck injury, marking the end of a career that spanned 16 seasons including his last 2 seasons as an Adelaide Crow.
After his initial retirement from the game, Wayne agreed to assist former coach and mentor Denis Pagan at the Carlton Football Club acting voluntarily as a part-time skills coach in early 2005, and in 2006 he was an assistant coach at Collingwood Football Club whilst also working as as a commentator and host of shows on the Fox Footy Channel.
In 2007 he moved full time into the media and was a member of the Nine Network’s football analysis program Footy Classified, as well as providing special comments for 3AW’s football coverage, however he would llater retreat from public life.
In 2012 Wayne slowly stepped back into the football and media spotlight, initially joining the Triple M Melbourne AFL commentary team and ONE HD’s The Game Plan.
In 2013, he joined The Marngrook Footy Show on National Indigenous Television as a regular panellist and later that year he joined the Seven Network to host a series of Talking Footy specials alongside Bruce McAvaney, Luke Darcy and Andrew Demetriou to cover both the Essendon drugs scandal and the finals series.
In 2014, he decided to step up his media roles and joined the Seven Network as a Friday night Expert and also a permanent panellist on Talking Footy.
In 2015, Carey’s metamorphosis is complete and he is now one of the coveted expert voices in the AFL as part of the Seven Network’s marquee Friday-night commentary team and co-host of Talking Footy on Mondays, along with his work within Triple M’s AFL broadcast on Sundays, co-hosting “Dead Set Legends” on Saturdays and his weekly opinion piece in The AGE Newspaper.
