Canadian Football League punters are almost always in the 40s. Average yards per punt, that is.
Scott Crough also hopes CFL punters can be in their 40s. Age demographic, that is.
The 41-year-old punter from Down Under is in training camp with the Elks at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium. While he has never played a down in the CFL, Crough hopes to make the cut in Edmonton. Final roster decisions will come after the CFL pre-season concludes with the Elks hosting the Calgary Stampeders on June 3.
On June 4, Crough will turn 42. Edmonton’s 2022 regular schedule begins a week later, when the Elks visit the B.C. Lions in Vancouver on June 11.
“Someone said to me I’ll be the oldest rookie in professional football history if I was to play,” Crough notes with a smile.
Age is just one part of the former Australian Rules Football player’s unique story. The latest chapter finds the Ballarat, Australia, product in Alberta for a second time, a decade after his first attempt at the CFL, in 2012 with the Stampeders.
Crough never appeared in a game for Calgary; he was released by the Stamps after injuring his back in training camp. He did, however, make an impression on Elks head coach and general manager Chris Jones, who around that time was Calgary’s defensive coordinator and assistant director of player personnel.
“(Jones) reached out to me a couple of months ago, just to ask if I could still punt the ball,” Crough says. “At that stage I wasn’t too sure, but I quickly came to the realization that I could still do it, despite my age. I guess punting’s a skill that you can carry into your older years, so I decided to have a go at it because it’s an opportunity that ill never get again.”
Crough has been working in the painting and decorating industry. Before Jones called, he hadn’t given a thought to giving football another shot.
“I think it had been about six or seven years since I had punted a football,” the six-foot-four, 225-pounder says. “I went looking for a couple of my old CFL balls which had disintegrated in that time. But I went through an academy, Prokick Australia, and the muscle memory is all still there.”
Workin 😤 pic.twitter.com/Dz15FGsTtV
— Scott (@scott_crough) April 28, 2022
Still, Crough’s decision to come to Edmonton wasn’t easy, as it potentially means several months being apart from his wife and their son, Leo, who just turned one.
“it’s hard,” Crough says. “Obviously he’s young enough that he doesn’t comprehend what’s going on. He’s at the age where it wasn’t going to disrupt him at school, so it was the time to do it.
“I’ve got so much some support back home from my wife. She’s been amazing, she’s handling everything back there, so my job is just to kick the ball as well as I can.”
Of the around 100 players in training camp, Crough is the oldest by more than five years. But so what if some were only a few months old in 2001 when Crough was the Best and Fairest Award winner in the Central Highlands Football League? He’s having the time of his midlife.
“I’ve had more fun here in (less than) a week than I had at Calgary,” says Crough. “I think now being older, I’m not putting as much pressure on myself and it’s going to be a free swing at it.”