Calsher Dear isn’t a footballer with the bullocking style of his father Paul, whose AFL career finished nearly nine years before Calsher was born and who died almost two years before his youngest son debuted for Hawthorn.
Nor does Calsher, a lithe 195-centimetre leaping athlete, own what he termed his father’s “tree trunk” legs and powerful physique.
Calsher Dear will make his return for Hawthorn through the VFL next week.Credit: Hawthorn FC
“Yeah, it’s quite funny. He (his late father) is built exactly like my brother Nate – 188(cm) but weighed 110 kilos, and just had legs the size of tree trunks.”
But if Calsher is a vastly different athlete and footballer to his father, Paul Dear’s impact on his life has been immense, and remains so.
Composed and articulate for a 19-year-old footballer – the words flow freely and are seldom fumbled – Calsher said that remembrance of his father was a source of comfort.
“I thought about him every day. Still do,” said Calsher, when asked if he’d found himself thinking of his late father in last year’s Easter Monday game against the Cats, the first designated as the “Dare to Hope” game for the cause of fighting pancreatic cancer.
The late Paul Dear won a Norm Smith Medal playing for Hawthorn in the 1991 grand final. His son Calsher is now playing for the Hawks.Credit: Wayne Ludbey / Getty Images
“I mean, it’s pretty hard not to, like every avenue, basically, of my life is connected to him in some form.
“But I don’t really see it as … a bad thing. I find comfort in it. So yeah, I try to think about him a lot.”
Paul Dear died in July of 2022 from pancreatic cancer, less than two years after his diagnosis. The grim statistics for pancreatic cancer – “only 13 per cent of people, or something, survive longer than a year” said Calsher – are due in large measure to the fact that the disease is usually detected when the cancer is fatally advanced.
“You sort of don’t find it until it’s too late,” Calsher said. “So Dad went to the doctor just for a check-up, and all was fine. Thought, he just had a bit of sickness.”
Because Paul Dear’s sister had died of bowel cancer, aged 44, and their parents had died of cancer, the doctor ordered blood tests and scans. A spot was found on Paul’s pancreas. “And then it came back that he had stage four pancreatic cancer,” Calsher says.
As a kid, Calsher and his siblings had the 1991 grand final on a DVD, so he knows well how his father tore holes in the West Coast Eagles and won the Norm Smith Medal in the only grand final played at Waverley – often referred to as the “batmobile grand final” for Angry Anderson’s drive-by performance in a moving car at what later became Hawthorn’s training base.
On Easter Monday, the MCG will be circumnavigated (pre-game), not by a batmobile, but by six relay runners aiming to raise at least $400,000 for “Dare to Hope” – the charity established by Calsher’s mother Cherie, with Hawthorn’s backing, and which the Dear family hope can achieve some of the money and awareness-raising that Neale Daniher’s “Big Freeze” has done for another terrible affliction, motor neurone disease.
Andy Collins, Hawthorn assistant coach and a good friend of Paul Dear’s from their playing days, had invited Paul, then under treatment, to speak to the club, in a step that was a precursor to the establishment of Dare to Hope. Calsher said St Kilda’s Jack Macrae, who lost his father David to pancreatic cancer, was getting involved in the charity, as was Giants young gun Finn Callaghan as a mate of his brother Nate.
The late Paul Dear (far left) with his sons (left to right) Calsher, Harry and Nate.
Ex-players Billy Brownless, Isaac Smith and Jordan Lewis, comedian Dave Hughes, 800 metres champion Abbey Caldwell and Calsher’s sister Maya will take turns running, with Brian Taylor calling the race. “Every $2000 donated will be a head start to the relay team,” Calsher said.
Paul Dear once told his friend Steve Perkin, the former journalist and editor, that Calsher, then seven or eight years old, would be one among his offspring who made it in the AFL, since he possessed the necessary aggression (his father venturing a more colourful description). “That’s good to hear,” said Calsher.
But Calsher’s passage to the AFL was far from assured. His eldest brother Harry, slightly taller at 197cm, spent four years at the Adelaide Crows before his AFL career abruptly ceased.
“(He) was there four years, got delisted with arthritis all through his knees, which sort of cooked him,” Calsher said. “I think he found it a bit tough in Adelaide.”
The footy-only focus of life in Adelaide was challenging for Harry Dear.
Calsher gleaned much from Harry’s Crows’ stint. “It taught me more about, just sort of balance between life and football.”
Harry, he added, was “probably the hardest worker that I know … is fitter than me still. And with arthritis in his knees, you just really give up.”
Eligible to be taken as a father-son selection at Hawthorn, Calsher’s football journey was complicated by basketball. He played for Beaumaris Football Club (juniors) and the elite Sandringham Dragons and for the Sandringham Sabres in basketball, training on the same night for two hours at each sport.
Calsher and Paul Dear.
Calsher sought counsel from his dad.
“He’s like, ’well you’re still undecided what you want to do and this is your top age of basketball, so if you miss this year, there’s no going back, but [you’re] bottom age of Dragons, so you still have the chance to go back next year.”
Dad’s contention was that Calsher still had that final year to AFL show recruiters his wares.
“First four games I was pretty shit and didn’t do much,” Calsher recalls, explaining that he found his best in the finals, playing as a key forward.
Not invited to the AFL national combine, nor picked in the national under 18s, he did off-site testing and sent the results to the clubs. His leap off one step was an exceptional 97-98cm – like his father, he’s capable of rucking, though the son’s method is high-leaping rather than weight-trading.
Hawthorn was interested, but did not commit to drafting him, as either rookie or senior lister, until November 11, some days before the 2023 national draft. Calsher says he wasn’t assured of being at his father and uncle Greg’s old team (Greg Dear rucked in Hawthorn’s 1986, 1988 and 1989 flags), until the first night of the national draft; Hawthorn had to ascertain whether they had Luke McCabe’s son Will sorted before they would guarantee Calsher a (senior list) position.
Calsher surprised himself – and his coaches – in his first season, when he played 17 games and booted 24 goals, filling a key-forward post as a teenager. “I know I’m sort of a longer-term project and then a few things fell my way, with injuries and suspension, and I got a chance and sort of took it from there, did the best I could,” he says.
“And it went well, but yeah, I shocked myself completely last year.”
After that meteoric first season, Calsher is yet to play in 2025 due to a stress fracture in his lower back. Better news is that he’s fully recovered and will play in the VFL next weekend. “Credit to them (Hawthorn’s medical team) because I feel back to 100 per cent,” he said.
Calsher says marking has long been his strength. His modus operandi, however, is about contesting, more than plucking marks. “(It) pisses me off more when I get out-marked than when I drop an easy mark.”
His goal is to bring the ball to ground for Hawthorn’s potent small forwards. “So everything I do on the forward line is trying to bring it to ground for them and then going for a mark when it’s the right time.
“I don’t know … I find myself quite competitive,” said Calsher, seemingly puzzled by his own nature.
His father, though, wouldn’t be.
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