Brodie Grundy lifts lid on family heartache amid bombshell move to the Sydney Swans
The Swans recruit has laid bare the family heartbreak of him uprooting his life to moving to Sydney.
Sydney Swans recruit Brodie Grundy says his family were very disappointed to learn he chose a move to Sydney over Port Adelaide. The veteran ruckman had a poor 2023 season after moving to the Melbourne Demons with the All-Australian spending a large part of the season in the VFL.
Grundy has since ultimately decided to move to Sydney turning down the chance to move back home to Adelaide. Grundy told News Corp that his mother was well aware of Port Adelaide's interest and was upset that he didn't move back close to family.
'COULDN'T WALK': Grim details emerge over Adelaide player's Bali accident
SHATTERED: Collingwood star Dan McStay in devastating training injury
"She’s pissed. She’s f****** pissed," Grundy said. "Honestly, family is a massive thing. My family is all still in Adelaide. (But) we were well-intentioned to have kids and set up our family there in Melbourne. When it became clear that wasn’t going to be an option ... it (was like), ‘OK, where do I want to play football?'
"I feel strongly about my alignment here at Sydney and that was a big enough push to want to come here. I told Mum and she was pretty direct in giving me that feedback. But she’s come around and now she’s sending me content on Sydney beaches and she’s loving it. She just wanted her not-so-little boy to come home."
Grundy's eye-opening revelation about Melbourne Demons saga
The Swans recruit insists despite his failed stint at the Demons he harbours no resentment towards the club. Grundy was brought to the Demons for the 2023 season in the hopes he would strike up a tandem ruck partnership with Max Gawn but unfortunately for the Demons and Grundy, they never really clicked and the 30-year-old made just 17 appearances across the season.
Brought to the Swans to replace the retired Tom Hickey as Sydney's No.1 ruck option for next season, Grundy told Triple M his time at Melbourne was quite a sobering experience. "Playing VFL, it's pretty sobering when you get dropped," he said. "A big part of what we do is our jobs, we got a lot of satisfaction out of that.
"When that isn't where we want it to be, it's hard to reconcile. Getting towards the end of my career, I want to be able to maximise my time playing AFL footy."
Grundy has had to face the realisation that for the second season running he's found himself out of favour in the senior side, with the same situation also arising at Collingwood. Looking back on his frustrating 2023, the 30-year-old says while it's disappointing his move to the Demons didn't work out, he doesn't blame the club.
"I've tried to be as professional as I can be. At the time I was employed by the Melbourne Football Club to come in, play, challenge Max (Gawn) at training and play on Steven May and Jake Lever in the forward line," he said. "I wanted to give it a go and see if I could play finals, come in and kick some goals. But it wasn’t to be.
"We had a mutual conversation towards the end... I spoke to Goody (Simon Goodwin), and we were having conversations all the way through. Hand on heart, I don’t have a bad word to say about Melbourne. The people there are fantastic. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed my time there."
Sign up to our newsletter and score the biggest sport stories of the week.
