Suffering the fate of being delisted by an AFL team would obviously be a blow to the ego, but it does not necessarily lead to a fate of stocking shelves at Woolworths.
The Fremantle Dockers sent Peter Bell packing after the 1995 season, short of his 20th birthday. He had only two opportunities to play on the senior side that season, in rounds 1 and 16.
Bell was picked up by North Melbourne in 1996. He played 5 seasons for the Shinboners, 123 games in all, which included premierships in 1996 and 1999. The side also made it to the finals the other three years he spent with North.
He did so well that the Dockers brought him back in 2001, where he played eight seasons, another 161 games, playing up until the age of 32, although he never again appeared in the finals.
Bell figured prominently in the 2003 Brownlow Medal voting, receiving 19, three short of the three-way tie at the top that saw the award gong to Nathan Buckley of the ‘Pies, Adam Goodes of the Swans and Mark Ricciuto of the Crows.
Other players have survived being delisted to go on to glory, including Saverio Rocca, the Magpies player who played 156 games for that club before being sent to the ‘Roos, where he played another hundred games before code hopping to the NFL in the U.S., where he enjoyed five seasons with two teams as a well-compensated punter.
