Oscar McInerney will write his own slice of Brisbane Lions history when he makes his AFL debut against the Greater Western Sydney Giants in Sydney on Saturday.
Among 308 Brisbane Bears/Lions players and 1156 players from merger partner Fitzroy the 23-year-old ruckman will be first named Oscar to play at
McInerney, from the outer Melbourne suburb of Montrose via the Casey Scorpions in the VFL, will follow a well-worn path to AFL ranks via the Rookie Draft.
He will be the 40th Lions rookie to graduate to Senior football, hoping to emulate in some way the feats of the Club’s most famous rookie graduate, Robert Copeland.
Robert Copeland back in 2003. 
Copeland played in the 2001 Lions premiership side after starting the season on the rookie list and without even having played an AFL game.
And by the time he retired in 2008 the hard-nosed Queensland defender had played 143 games and picked up another premiership medal in 2003.
But just as McInerney might be inspired by the efforts of Copeland he will be tempered by rookie statistics which underline just what a challenge lies ahead of him.
Of 78 players chosen by Brisbane in the rookie draft since its inception in
The major exceptions have been Copeland, 129-game Irishman Pearce Hanley, now playing at the Gold Coast, 100-gamer Cheynee Stiller and 94-gamer Josh Drummond, now an assistant-coach at North Melbourne.
Joel Macdonald played 80 games for the Lions coming off the rookie list before adding a further 44 for Melbourne, while Daniel Pratt, now an assistant-coach at West Coast, wrote the great ‘rookie who got away’ story, playing 116 games at North after three games with the Lions.
Rookies to play 50 games for the Lions have been Mitch Golby (56), Justin Clarke (56), the still listed Claye Beams (54) and Jason Roe (50).
Scott Harding played 48 games for the Lions after starting as a rookie and added two for Port Adelaide to join the 50-game club, while Trent Knobel played 13 games for the Lions as a rookie graduate before adding 62 at St.Kilda and Richmond.
Jack Crisp, traded to Collingwood as part of the deal that secured captain Dayne Beams, has played 71 games for the Magpies after 18 games as a rookie product in Brisbane.
McInerney will be the seventh player to wear jumper #46 for the club, following David Wearne, who played 16 games in that number in 1990-91 before switching to #29, and five players from the Lions era, who, ironically all started as rookies.
They were Travis Baird (2 games in 2005), Irishman Colm Begley (29 games in 2006-07-08), Broc McCauley (3 games in 2011), Sam Michael (3 games in 2013), and Billy Evans (7 games in 2015-16).
Only two Fitzroy players are listed as having worn #46 in their only senior appearances – Bob Eastaway played two games in #46 in 1962, and Dean Lupson played six games in #46 in 1989-90.
