Hewitt wanted to play Australian Rules football
Greg Buckle
Lleyton Hewitt may be the number one tennis player in the world but when he was a boy he wanted to be an Australian Rules footballer.
The Wimbledon champion proudly wore his Adelaide Crows Football Club jumper during his on-court warm-up as Australia beat India 5-0 in their Davis Cup world group relegation tie in Adelaide last week.
Unfortunately for Hewitt, the Collingwood Magpies defeated the Crows in their Australian Football League (AFL) preliminary final on Saturday.
But the 21-year-old from Adelaide is still looking forward to attending Saturday's grand final between the Magpies and Brisbane, a match that will be watched by a crowd of 90,000 at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
"Growing up, I played as much football as I could and now travelling around the world I am always trying to keep up with what's happening in the AFL and the Adelaide Crows," Hewitt wrote in the "AFL Record" official programme this week.
"I can't wait to be at the grand final again. Last year was the first one I had been to and it was just fantastic."
Hewitt said he started playing the 18-a-side game when he was six and had success at high school level.
GOING AWAY
"Football was my number one sport until I was about 13 or 14 and then tennis took over," he said.
"I was going away overseas with junior (tennis) teams."
Hewitt's father Glynn played for Melbourne AFL club Richmond in the 1970s.
The world number one was given permission to miss Sunday's reverse singles against India, which were dead rubbers, by Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald so that he could play in a Crows charity football match in Adelaide.
Hewitt kicked three goals in the match, celebrating with a typical double-fisted arm pump, and showed enough dash to avoid any possibility of a heavy tackle interrupting his tennis career.
"I'm definitely not the greatest footballer out there but it's great to be playing with people I idolised as a kid," Hewitt was quoted as saying in the Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser.
Hewitt's passion for Australian Rules football matches that of 1987 Wimbledon champion Pat Cash.
Australian Cash, whose father Patrick Cash Snr played for Hawthorn in the 1950s, often visited the players in the locker room on grand final day during the club's golden run of five premierships between 1983 and 1991.
