Veteran Channel 9 sports presenter Michael Thomson had to ask Brady Grey again – “So you’ve only played two years of football before being drafted?”

The Tasmanian recruit was speaking to the Perth media at Wednesday’s Bravery Awards ceremony at Freo headquarters.

“I played about 50 (games) in junior footy and about 13 at senior level before I got drafted,” Grey said.

The Indigenous 18-year-old was also a standout soccer player and cricketer growing up in the Apple Isle.

Grey was asked what the hardest part of learning a new game plan was for someone without much football background.

He saw it as a positive.

“It’s probably helped me not having someone else’s game plan, I’ve just jumped straight into Ross’,” he said.

Grey has impressed playing for Peel Thunder in a variety of roles, which is a far cry from the single position he manned in his brief junior career.

“I used to play out of the square, I was a full forward,” he said.

“But when I got over here (Freo) they introduced versatility, so I’ve played down back, as a small forward, on the wing and, the past couple of weeks, as a run-with.”

Grey has been named as an emergency twice for the AFL side in recent weeks and flew with the team to the round 11 game against the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium.

While being an emergency could be construed as being on the verge of AFL selection, Grey doesn’t see it that way.

“At Fremantle we’ve got a really strong squad, probably 30-35 players who are all capable of playing senior football,” he said.

“I got the opportunity to fly over to Melbourne and that was a really great experience that I will take back to Peel.

“At the moment I’m just trying to bide my time and keep improving as a player.”

He’s also bought strongly into his senior coach’s defence-first philosophy.

“The new AFL, there’s a lot of defensive running, so I’m trying to get that into my game,” Grey said.

“We pride ourselves on our defence. If you want to play senior football you’ve got to be good defensively.”

Helping him better his game has been his mentor, Stephen Hill, and he’s analysing the games of some other Freo stars, as well.

“I take a lot from Nat Fyfe’s game, watching his vision, and Ryan Crowley the past couple of weeks, just watching how he goes about it and trying to portray it into my game,” he said.

“We get to train with them every single day, so I’m trying to take things out of their game and put into mine.”