Eighteen-year-old Josh Schache is set to a follow the same path as some of the Brisbane Football Club’s truly elite with his AFL debut on Sunday.

In 29 years of the club, during which time 288 players have worn the colors of the Brisbane Bears/Lions, only 12 teenage draftees have won selection in the Round 1 side in their first year at the club.

Schache, told on Monday by coach Justin Leppitsch he will debut against the West Coast Eagles in Perth on Sunday, will be No.12.

The 199cm key forward will join a list that includes Leppitsch and the coach’s triple premiership teammates Simon Black, Chris Scott and Shaun Hart.

Hart was the first Brisbane teenager to debut in Round 1 of his first season at the club in 1990, while Leppitsch, Scott and Black followed in 1993, 1994 and 1998.

Others to have done so have been Nathan Chapman (1993), Troy Johnson (1996), Mitch Clark (2008), Daniel Rich (2009), Ryan Lester (2010), Lewis Taylor and James Aish (2014) and Jaden McGrath (2015).

Schache’s AFL debut for the Lions on Sunday will give the club its second father/son combination after Laurence Schache played 29 games for the Bears in 1991-92.

The other father/son duo is Geoff and Andrew Raines.

Geoff, a Richmond champion who also played at Essendon and Collingwood before heading north, was a member of the Bears very first side in 1987 and played 58 games for the club from 1987-89.

Andrew Raines played 67 Lions games between 2010-14 after 56 games at Richmond (2004-09) and before six games with the Gold Coast (2015).

Nick Raines, Andrew’s older brother, was also drafted by the Bears but didn’t play at senior level.

Laurence Schache took an entirely different path to Josh to get to Brisbane, and was five years older on debut than his son will be on Sunday.

Originally from Hopetoun, a small town 400m north-west of Melbourne, Schache Snr was zoned to Essendon and played in the lower grades with the Bombers. He kicked 25 goals in an U19s match against Sydney in 1985 but was unable to break into the seniors.

He moved to South Australia and played first with Sturt (1988) and then West Torrens (1989-90) before being claimed by the Bears with the first selection overall in the now defunct Mid-Season Draft in 1990.

He made his debut with the Bears aged 23 at the Gabba in Round 4 1991, when the club suffered a 102-point loss to Geelong in a game in which Bill Brownless kicked 11 goals.

The Brownless haul is a Gabba record, one more than Jonathan Brown’s 10 goals for Brisbane against Carlton in 2007, Jason Dunstall’s 10 for Hawthorn against the Bears in 1993, and Tony Lockett’s 10 for St.Kilda against the Bears in 1991.

Schache Snr played 17 senior games in 1991, winning the club's leading goal-kicker award with 47 goals, including a career best six goals against Adelaide in Round 14.  

He played 12 games for 17 goals in 1992 before being de-listed ahead of the AFL National Draft that bought Leppitsch to Brisbane in November 1992.

Returning to Adelaide, he joined Woodville-West Torrens and played in the merger club’s first premiership side in 1993 before a knee injury ended his career. He coached briefly at Latrobe in Tasmania before returning to Adelaide, and after being diagnosed with amyloidosis in July 2002 he died three months later aged 34.

Fittingly, Schache Jnr will wear the No.23 jumper worn by his father. He will be only the sixth player to wear No.23 for the club after Robert Mace (1 game), Kevin Caton (8), Schache Snr, Leppitsch (227) and Matthew Leuenberger (108).

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