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If Chris McDermott’s childhood sports dreams had come true, he would have been competing with Ian Healy for the position of Australia’s Test wicketkeeper in the 1980s and 1990s.

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, before the era of video games and iPhones and when black-and-white TV was limited, children had to find their own ways to entertain themselves.

McDermott was one of those kids who spent summers with a bat and ball and winters kicking a plastic football for hours, sometimes with his older brother Mark, occasionally with his younger sister Jane, but mostly by himself, always commentating on his own play.

He enters the Hall of Fame with a reputation for winning the ball, durability, leadership, and toughness, built over more than 400 senior games in his SANFL and AFL career, nearly half a lifetime since his last major AFL game in 1996.

Always at the bottom of packs, winning hard balls, and exuding leadership in the toughest situations.

This toughness is a recurring trait in his family.

The heart and soul of Glenelg and the inaugural captain of Adelaide, McDermott is inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

A dual premiership player with Glenelg, the first captain of the foundation Adelaide Crows, a multiple best-and-fairest winner, and a three-time All Australian, McDermott never really planned to be a footballer. Cricket had always called him.

His best friend Stephen Kernahan was alongside him in junior representative cricket teams, but the pair also excelled in football season.

“As a kid, I loved playing footy and was always around the game through my grandfather and my dad, but Ian Chappell was my absolute hero, and I was a wicketkeeper who wanted to play Test cricket for Australia,” McDermott recalls of his early sports path.

“I was doing okay with the state junior teams, playing with Stephen, until one day, around age 14 or 15, in a B grade district game against men, a fast bowler was just too quick for me, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this, I’m not good enough here’.”