‘I miss them’: Aussie NFL hopeful breaks down when talking about home
By Billie Eder
Australian teenager Archie Wilson has gone viral after he broke down in tears during a college football press conference while talking about missing home.
The NFL hopeful moved to America to play for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, after auditioning in front of coach Mike Ekeler live on FaceTime, but homesickness has taken its toll on the Melburnian since moving to the United States in June.
“I love them a lot. I’ve got two little brothers and a mum and dad, and that’s the tough part about being here,” Wilson said when asked about his family.
“I love them a lot and I miss them, but they know this is what’s best for me, and it’s good, I can still talk to them plenty over the phone, and they’re coming here to see the first few games, so I’m looking forward to that.”
Wilson has since made appearances on Good Morning America and the Today show in the US after the moment resonated with many around the world.
His parents, Lee and Jess, and brothers Lewis and Oscar spoke on the Australian Today show on Thursday morning and said the family would be reunited in 11 days when they head over for the start of the college football season.
“There was a lot of tears yesterday,” Jess said.
“It’s a bit crazy, but I spoke to him pretty much as soon as I woke up yesterday morning. He was absolutely fine, you can see at the end of the video he walks off, he’s fine, he just broke down in those few moments.
“He went on to do another hour of press, and he was actually fine after that. They managed to capture that one moment where he got asked about his family, and he clearly misses us, and he couldn’t control his emotions.”
Lee said the family hadn’t even seen the press conference when Archie messaged to assure his family he was OK.
“It happened quickly, and it kind of took us all by surprise when we watched it,” Lee said.
“The tears started, there was a bit of a family hug and we kind of sat in quiet and processed it a little bit ... He sent us a message [to say] he’s OK, ignore the press conference, before we’d actually watched it, and obviously we watched it straight away.”
Wilson, who turns 19 on Thursday, signed with the Cornhuskers after being part of the Prokick Australia system – an organisation founded in 2007 by former Brisbane Lions and Hawthorn AFL player Nathan Chapman.
Archie Wilson turns 19 today.
Like many Australians in the NFL, Wilson is a punter. The role of a punter is to kick the ball as close as possible to the opponent’s end zone without it entering the end zone. The average punter kicks four to five times a match, spending about one to three minutes on the field.
After grabbing the attention of Eckler, Wilson was put through the motions on FaceTime so the college coaches could see if he was the real deal.
“Coach Ekeler, to my belief, is the only coach that had seen me kick, and I think that Prokick knew that his coaching and that his style was the right skill set for me,” Wilson said.
“They kind of worked it out a fair bit behind my back, and then coach John Smith just came up to me one morning and was like, ‘Hey Archie, you’re going to Nebraska’.
“He’d seen videos and then there was a live FaceTime. So, he’d seen me kick live, so I couldn’t just show him my highlights. He saw live where there was the chance of stuff-ups, so there wasn’t a fluke.”
One of Wilson’s assets is that he can kick with both feet, a skill he said comes from playing Australian rules football.
“In Australia, playing Australian rules, it is a skill that can be useful if you’re running away from someone, it’s good to be able to kick it on both feet,” Wilson said.
“Some people, I’d say, give it a crack and have it as a skill to be able to use, as a weapon, but some people really ignore it. It’s not uncommon to see someone that can use both feet, but to use it at the level that’s kind of needed to be used in the college football system, it’s not too common.”
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.