IT was the most unlikely launching place for two of most highly-touted young footballers in the land.

On a dusty day in Geraldton, in outback Western Australia, Railways took on Towns in the rough-and-tumble Great Northern Football League senior grand final.

But it was two skinny teenagers who lined up on the wing that the locals still talk about to this day.

Never mind the fact that Railways broke a 21-year premiership drought that day in one of the biggest upsets in the league’s history, nor the fact that the celebrations went on for days.

PANIC ROOM: BUDDY NO CERTAINTY

EVERY MATCH: LIVE SUPERCOACH SCORES A CLICK AWAY

All anyone who were lucky enough to be there wanted to talk about was those teenagers.

Aged 15 and 16 at the time, Jack Martin and Jaeger O’Meara, played games that set in motion journeys that landed the pair at Gold Coast.

Suns recruiter Scott Clayton, who handed over No. 1 picks for both of them, heard the fanfare from across the country.

“Jaeger was best on ground and his team won the Grand Final and on the other wing was this other kid who just did some amazing things,” Clayton said.

“The locals still talk about this grand final because with these two kids they were like ‘Oh, wow, what have we got here’.”

On opposing teams the two kids traded dazzling acts, taking on and beating men more than twice their age and size.

More than 3500 fans had crammed into the Geraldton Recreation Reserve that September afternoon in 2010, yet not an AFL recruiter among them.

But almost from the time that word got out of the small mining, wheat and fishing town, the two seemed destined to grace a far bigger stage.

Railways president Dennis Gilleland could barely comprehend what he saw that day from O’Meara.

“It was unbelievable,” Gilleland said.

“You go to footy and you watch some kids play and you think they are pretty good.

“I thought I had seen some good ones until Jaeger turned it on that day. Then I realised I had been looking at mini mokes previously. Finally, I had seen a Rolls-Royce.

“His whole first half was extraordinary. His ability to cut through traffic and the stuff he has done from the get-go in the AFL he was doing that as a 16-year-old in the seniors over here.”

O’Meara won the Guardian Medal as the best player afield that day. It was almost as clear cut as his win in last year’s AFL Rising Star Award, an honour he had stitched up by mid-season.

And now Martin is tipped by those close to him to be even better.

He won the Guardian Medal two years and is clear favourite to ascend the Rising Star for back-to-back wins for Gold Coast.

Not surprisingly, the pair are now close mates, having crossed from WA’s mid-west coast line to Queensland’s sun city.

While O’Meara took home two medals that day, the one thing he won’t forget was the youngster who used his back for a stepladder.

“There were times when we played on each other, a couple of marking contests and he (Martin) would have stood on my head a couple of times,” O’Meara said.

“He has a great leap and is a great mark.”

The GNFL is renowned for its rugged play. O’Meara recalls the jumper punches he got in the goalsquare that day to curb his glittering talents, and Martin admits to having felt more than a little intimidated by the rugged physicality.

“It was pretty scary at the time,” Martin said. “I was pretty skinny. I look at the photos now and think ‘how did I get out there’.

“It really helped me playing against men, I learnt to crack into games and you know you have to cop it.

“The older guys get out there and want to get into the younger guys.”

Gilleland said: “We tend to play it a bit rougher out here ... there are not as many cameras. Plenty of stuff still happens off the ball.”

But Martin, 15, and O’Meara, 16, belied their years and their spindly frames to more than rise to the challenge.

While many of his mates kicked on with the premiership celebrations for days, O’Meara stuck to the water. He had to go to school the next day.

Now it is the Suns who are laughing.

Clayton was hooked on Martin early at the under-16s championships in western Sydney.

“He just clearly looked like he was an extraordinary talent,” he said. “He works extremely hard, he has this natural desire to compete.

“He tackles the house down. He just tackles, gets up and then he is suddenly 150 metres away marking the ball again.”

Over the past couple of years AFL clubs had the chance to nab the pair with trade deals with GWS. Gold Coast managed to do it not once but twice.

Clayton can see the pair being the cornerstone of Gold Coast’s first premiership side.

“For some clubs perhaps to their worse judgment, no one came up with a mature-aged package that gave GWS what they wanted in return,” he said.

“We were clearly prepared to pay a very good price because it fitted our strategy and we rated him (Martin) as an absolute elite player.

“You can just see it’s going to be a very exciting period.”