MITCH Podhajski has been working inside the same building as his new teammates for the past 18 months. They just didn't know he was there. Every Thursday, the sports podiatrist worked out of Performe Sports Medicine inside the Collingwood Football Club. 

Now Podhajski will be entering the KGM Centre through a different door after the Magpies selected the 191cm mobile forward with pick No.17 – the second-last pick – in Wednesday night's Telstra AFL Mid-Season Rookie Draft.

The 27-year-old is currently leading the VFL goalkicking with 27 goals from eight games – plus the four he booted in the state game against the SANFL during Gather Round – after finishing second in the 'Frosty' Miller Medal last year on 54 goals.

Podhajski (pronounced pa-dah-ski) had previously met with almost every AFL club, but not since he was a teenager. He attended the Draft Combine at 18 after playing for the Calder Cannons. Then the State Combine the following year after playing in the Talent League as an over-ager. 

But then, just a fortnight ago, Collingwood's national recruitment manager Shane O'Bree reached out to arrange a meeting with recruiting and list administration manager Shannon Collins and strategic analyst Richard Little. Podhajski wasn't going to waste his last chance at getting drafted.

"He [O'Bree] flicked me an email on the Wednesday asking if it would be a possibility we could catch up? I said 'I'm actually there tomorrow morning. Do you want to just tee that up and I'll rule out some time in my diary?' So we got things organised pretty quickly," Podhajski told AFL.com.au.

"When I had my interview with the team, the point that I really wanted to make clear, whether this is deserved or not, I would come in feeling confident I can bring my best footy and play. And that was off the back of the way I mark my games as a Coburg player: competing really hard aerially, being alive at ground level, and being really active in first-phase defence. Those three things I think I can translate (to the next level)."

If that is to happen, it won't be the first time someone with a similar surname – and similar wait for a chance in the AFL – has debuted at this stage of life after starring in the VFL. 

James Podsiadly spent a few years on the rookie list at Essendon and Collingwood, but famously, the key forward didn't make his AFL debut until the age of 28 after getting another crack at Geelong, having won almost everything on offer in the VFL. He ended up playing in the 2011 flag at the Cats and 104 AFL games across two clubs.

"Podsiadly has been my  [fantasy football] name since I've been playing from about 15 years old, so I'm pretty familiar with his story," Podhajski said.

"Having read everything over the last couple of weeks, the comparisons to get to this point are pretty scary. Hopefully, I can have half the career that he went on to have from this point."

Podhajski watched the Mid-Season Rookie Draft inside the coaches' room, upstairs at the Coburg Football Club on Tuesday night, alongside coach Jamie Cassidy-McNamara and GM Nick Byrne. The stream was on delay. Thirty seconds before he heard his name read out by Nat Edwards on AFL.com.au, everyone started screaming downstairs. Then his moment arrived.

"Our stream was delayed but we weren't aware of it, so we heard some screaming about 30 seconds before it downstairs and we all looked at each other. Port was still on the clock, who I hadn't spoken to, so we just sort of brushed it off as maybe they were outside mucking around or something, but then it became real on the TV and it was a huge relief initially," he said.

"There's so much work that gets into it to get you to that point, but, and yeah, it's been exciting going through the last couple of weeks, and sort of realising that this may be an opportunity and it was something that I didn't let myself get carried away or get too hopeful. But yeah, I'm so grateful to get the opportunity now."

Podhajski doesn't think he would be in this position without the Coburg Football Club. He has played 104 games for the standalone VFL club since 2018 when he was still playing for the Calder Cannons. He has weathered the storm with that club, where Cassidy-McNamara transformed him from a defender into a forward late in 2023, amid a transformation period for the Burgers.

"Playing VFL for the primary reason to get drafted maybe stopped, honestly, maybe three or four years ago, but I really understood that if it was ever going to happen, it's going to require me to get the absolute most out of myself," he said.

"I haven't ever judged myself on whether I get drafted or not to be a pass mark. It's always been about my own development, and the primary reason why I'm still there is my mates at Coburg; that was my footy team, all my good mates are there and I wanted nothing more than to be a part of Coburg, turning their journey around from what was a really poor team for the first couple of years.

"2023, which was my fifth year of footy there, we didn't win a game. We went 0 and 18. That was Jamie's first year and I was playing back, and had been back for a couple of years. Jamie decided with three or four games to go to swing me forward and see what we could do.

"I think by that point I'd sort of flagged the idea of at least at the end of the year I was going to reconsider whether I just go back to local footy. I think those couple of games playing as a forward gave me a lot of belief, and Jamie certainly believed in me, probably more than I believed in me as a forward. I owe quite a lot to Jamie for pushing me really hard. I've really thrived under his coaching."

Podhajski finished a masters in podiatric practice in 2020 and has been working in as a sports podiatrist ever since. Last year, he completed a master of sports medicine at Melbourne University. He started his own business in Gisborne just before Christmas and also worked out of a private practice in Thornbury two days a week.

"That will all have to stop for the minute," he said. "I floated the idea around maybe hiring someone, but I want to just give this a full proper crack and not be mentally occupied by that, so I will have to get on to my patients and maybe give them a little bit of a handover for the next person they go to see, but yeah, that'll be paused indefinitely."

Podhajski has a six-month contract at Collingwood, which essentially only spreads across 12 potential games right now. But with Jamie Elliott rupturing his ACL on the weekend and the Magpies still struggling to cover the loss of Brody Mihocek, the podiatrist from Coburg is out to become the next Podsiadly.