page_title: Sam Weideman
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Sam Weideman / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Sam Weideman pictured following a pre-season match in February 2017
context_page_description: Samuel Weideman is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the Melbourne Football Club in the Australian Football League. A key forward, Weideman is 1.96 metres tall and weighs 97 kilograms. He played top-level football early, playing in the TAC Cup as a bottom-aged player. His achievements as a junior included two best and fairest awards and national representation. Even though an ankle injury forced him to miss the majority of his final year of junior football, he was drafted by Melbourne with the ninth selection in the 2015 AFL draft. He made his AFL debut in 2016, making him a third-generation footballer, whereby he is the grandson of the Collingwood Football Club's 1958 premiership captain, Murray Weideman, and the son of former Collingwood player, Mark Weideman.
context_section_description: Weideman was born into an Australian rules football family with his grandfather, Murray Weideman, playing 180 matches for the Collingwood Football Club, including winning two premierships (he captained the 1958 premiership), winning three Copeland Trophies as Collingwood's best and fairest, and is a member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame; his father, Mark Weideman, also played for Collingwood, playing 28 games. Although both his father and grandfather played for Collingwood, he grew up a passionate supporter of the Richmond Football Club. He attended Whitefriars College, graduating year twelve in 2015, and he played his junior football with the Vermont Football Club in the Eastern Football League where he won back-to-back best and fairests after switching from a ruckman to a forward at 16 years of age. He played with the Eastern Ranges in the TAC Cup as a bottom-aged player in 2014, and despite an iron deficiency and an ankle stress fracture hampering his second half of the season, he played fifteen matches and kicked nineteen goals. He received a scholarship within the prestigious AFL Academy for 2015, which included playing in the curtain raiser for the 2014 AFL Grand Final with the under-17 Australian team.
  Returning to the Eastern Ranges in 2015, Weideman played five matches, kicking nine goals, including five goals in one match against the Dandenong Stingrays. As part of the AFL Academy, he played two matches in April against Victorian Football League (VFL) sides, Werribee and the Northern Blues, both at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in the second match, his first quarter saw him kick two goals and take five marks and he was named in the best players by AFL Media. He received mid-year honours through selection with Vic Metro for the 2015 AFL Under 18 Championships, and he was named vice-captain, however a re-aggravation of his ankle injury saw him ruled out for the entire championships and the remainder of the TAC Cup season. After playing no football since May, doubts surrounded Weideman and his injuries, however Eastern Ranges talent manager, Len Villani, noted "his qualities made him a rare commodity", and the AFL Academy coach, Brad Johnson, stated "every now and then you’ll see things from him and you know with good development into the future, he’s going to turn into a really strong, consistent performer" and "the right people have seen enough already through his junior days to say he’ll be able to get back to some pretty strong fitness, work on his endurance and become a really good hit-up forward". Along with comparisons to Fremantle forward, Matthew Pavlich, and Gold Coast forward, Tom Lynch, he was predicted to still be drafted inside the top ten in the 2015 national draft.
caption: Weideman in February 2017
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.03", "Image DateTime": "2017:02:20 16:55:56", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "2294", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "42134", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "42260", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6805", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1600", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:02:18 18:40:39", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:02:18 18:40:39", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "300", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1426", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2318", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "42084", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "450", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "C386DC442C0041A4BAD51FB3FCAF3521", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4088"}