Four years and 91 days ago, on 17 July 2021, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan played the second game of his AFL career at People First Stadium. He took his first contested mark, kicked his first goal and celebrated his first win. 

The AFL website described the Round 18 Saturday twilight clash between Ugle-Hagan’s second-placed Western Bulldogs and the 14^th-placed Gold Coast SUNS as a “coming out party” and “an exciting sneak peek into the boundless ability” of the #1 pick in the 2020 AFL National Draft.

Midway through the first term on the lead to mark overhead in the left pocket at the scoreboard end. He slotted a glorious 45m set shot from near the boundary line before the customary mobbing by teammates.

In the second term the smooth-moving 194cm 19-year-old got on the end of a Marcus Bontempelli laser pass to kick his second goal from 50m, and in the third term he converted a tough round-the-corner set shot for his third.

He finished with three goals from eight possessions, four marks inside 50, one contested mark and one tackle from 69% game time in an 11-point Bulldogs win. And he hasn’t played at People First Stadium since.

But next year the SUNS headquarters will be ‘home’ for the now 23-year-old after the club completed a deal which will give the prodigiously talented 195cm forward a second chance in the AFL.

This is not about that. It is an introduction for SUNS fans to a player who has committed his all to the club after 67 games and 103 goals with the Bulldogs from 2021-24.

It is about a story which began at the Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve in south-west Victoria, where Ugle-Hagan was born on 4 April 2002. His family consists of Indigenous mother Alice Ugle, non-Indigenous Irish father Aaron Hagan, five younger brothers and one older sister.

Located on the traditional lands of the Kirrae Wuurong people following its European settlement in the 1840s, Framlingham is on the Hopkins River 20km north-west of the coastal city of Warrnambool. 

While the family has long and strong ties to the region, after starting his schooling at Warrnambool College Ugle-Hagan left to go to the prestigious Scotch College in Melbourne as a Year 9 boarder.

He played community football with East Warnambool and South Warrnambool in his youth before being picked up by the Oakleigh Chargers, who in 2019 delivered Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson to the SUNS as pick #1 and pick #2 in the National Draft.

Ugle-Hagan, also a member of the Bulldogs’ Next Generation Academy, was the #1 pick overall in a 2020 National Draft in which the Bulldogs matched a bid by the Adelaide Crows.

It was a draft best remembered as that which followed a season in which Under 18 football across the country was severely compromised by Covid-19. The Coates Talent League was abandoned mid-season and a record low 58 players were drafted.

Ugle-Hagan was described in The Age immediately after the 2020 Draft as “a precocious and dazzling tall forward with speed off the mark and agility matched by his one-touch overhead marking and a left foot with innate goal sense”.

He is one of only two Indigenous players taken at #1 in the National Draft behind Brisbane’s Des Headland in 1998.

He has kicked 103 goals in 67 games, including 35 in 2023, when he was second to Aaron Naughton in the Bulldogs’ goal-kicking, and a club-high 43 goals in 2024.

Three times he has kicked five goals in a game but his best performance was four goals and a career-high 20 possessions against Carlton in Round 18 2024 at Marvel, when he picked up his first three-vote rating in the Brownlow Medal.

More of a roaming mid-sized forward that a traditional high-marking tall forward, Ugle-Hagan has played three times against the SUNS – all at different venues.  2021 he kicked three goals, another three in a seven-point SUNS win in Darwin in 2023, and one goal in a 48-point Dogs win in Ballarat in 2024 in what was Jed Walter’s debut.

Twelve members of the ‘enemy’ in Ballarat that day are still at the SUNS and will be teammates in 2026 - Anderson, Rowell, Walter, Collins, Charlie Ballard, Nick Holman, Ben King, Ben Long, Touk Miller, Ned Moyle, Wil Powell and Bodhi Uwland.