Keegan Brooksby will be the exception to the norm when he becomes the Gold Coast SUNS’ 76th player with his debut against Hawthorn in Launceston tomorrow.

The AFL’s 17th club has essentially been about first-time opportunity for young players or a second chance/fresh start/new challenge for players from opposition clubs.

Among the 76 players to wear the red and yellow of the SUNS at AFL level, Brooksby will be the 57th AFL debutant. The other 19 have moved to Metricon from other AFL clubs.

Exactly half of the SUNS players have debuted as teenagers, but Brooksby, a ruckman from South Adelaide in the SANFL, is at the other end of the scale.

He’ll be 25 years and 33 days old when he lines up against the 2013-14 AFL premiers.

Only fellow South Australian Michael Coad has been older on debut. He was 27 years and 208 days when he first tasted AFL football in the SUNS’ second game in 2011.

Brooksby, a standout junior basketballer who rejected several US college offers before switching to football at 18, was regarded as the best ruckman outside the AFL last year in a South Adelaide side that played in the SANFL grand final.

Short by ruck standards at 197cm but exceedingly mobile, he won the South Adelaide B&F and fitted perfectly into the SUNS’ recruiting plans for the 2015 rookie draft, when the club quite deliberately focussed on more mature talent.

Brooksby follows Adam Saad, Josh Glenn, Greg Broughton and Andrew Raines as pick-ups from the 2015 rookie draft who have played at senior level this year. He was taken at No.42.

Brooksby will join another rookie graduate, Andrew Boston, in becoming the club’s 38th and 39th players this year.

Even in the club’s first year in 2011 they had only used 35 players by Round 9.

In 2012 it was 38 players to this point of the season and in 2013-14 this figure was 30 and 29 players.

In a further product of the extraordinary injury toll that has been such a nightmare for new coach Rodney Eade, Brooksby will be the SUNS’ sixth AFL debutant in nine rounds this year, and the ninth player to wear SUNS colors at AFL level for the first time in 2015.

Like Brooksby, Boston will be rewarded for perseverance when he plays his seventh AFL game and his first since Round 23 2013,when he posted a career high 17 possessions and kicked four goals in the club’s biggest ever win by 83 points against the GWS Giants at Metricon.

It will have been 636 days between outings for the now 21-year-old Gold Coaster.

Only Tom Nicholls and Jack Hutchins, who was delisted at the end of last year, have spent more than a full season between games for the club.

Nicholls, who will join Brooksby in the ruck against Hawthorn, was an extraordinary 748 days between his AFL debut in  Round 8 2011 and his second game in Round 10 2013.

Hutchins, now playing with the Casey Scorpions in the VFL, was 637 days between his sixth AFL game in 2011 and his seventh game in 2013.

The SUNS will make their third trip to Aurora Stadium in Launceston to tackle Hawthorn hoping for a change of fortune, having lost by 71 points there in 2013 and 53 points last year.

Henry Schade will play his fifth game and first game on home soil, while fellow Tasmanians Kade Kolodjashni and Jesse Lonergan will enjoy their second homecoming and Luke Russell his third.