Gold Coast prospect compared to Errol Gulden opens up on back injury and AFL draft hopes

They call Zeke Uwland the second coming of Errol Gulden.

Sydney’s smooth-moving, sweet-kicking, run-all-day wingman is one of the AFL’s best players, so it is enormous praise for a teenager who has not even been drafted yet.

Uwland, a left-footer like Gulden who boasts many of the same traits, cringes at the comparison – and not for the reason you might think. Gulden is his favourite player, and he admires him so much that he hunted down his number to tell him.

“I certainly aspire to play like Errol. I don’t think I play like him – I want to play like him,” Uwland told this masthead. “I think I’m nowhere near Errol’s calibre, but he’s someone I really aspire to be like.”

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Uwland is a special player already, and someone who entered this past season viewed as the consensus best player in the draft after earning All-Australian under-18 honours last year as a bottom-ager.

Recruiters speak – no, gush – about him, complimenting his sky-high football IQ, his work ethic, athleticism and kicking skills. But this past year did not go according to plan for Gold Coast’s star academy product.

One night late last year, he was lying in bed and suddenly felt pain in his back.

There was instant concern, given Uwland watched his older brother, Suns player Bodhi, struggle with stress fractures in his back that left him in a brace and unable to run or kick a football for about a year.

Uwland’s own setback, which remains somewhat of a mystery, meant he missed most of the 2025 season, including the national championships, giving his peers the chance to challenge his hold on the No.1 prospect status.

He returned from his own back ailment, including a bulging disc and stress fracture, in time to make a handful of VFL appearances for Gold Coast and test strongly at last month’s draft combine.

“To have Bodhi’s support was so good. Him being through it, I definitely saw the light at the end of the tunnel, so it wasn’t the end of the world when it happened,” Uwland said.

“But it was weird. I’d never experienced something like it. They don’t even know if it was fractured, but the report said it was. It is confusing. It’s not conclusive at all, but I’d rather miss the time now.”

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The high-achieving Uwland, who has Dutch heritage and a heap of relatives in the Colac and Cobden regions, saw a silver lining that many others might not.

The 18-year-old diligently attacked his rehab, but also decided to throw himself full-time into his studies at Griffith University, where he is doing a law and commerce degree.

Uwland is not your typical footballer, in more ways than one, even if part of his motivation is the statistics around the average AFL player lasting only four years at the top level. The likelihood of him being spat out of the system that quickly is low, but his back injury was a reminder not to take football for granted.

“I’ve got to prepare myself as best I can for what’s after that,” he said.

“Knocking out a year-and-a-bit’s worth of uni this year is going to be huge in setting me up to, hopefully, have a successful career after football, whenever that may be. I want to be a corporate lawyer one day. I’m really particular about what I like, and I’m really ambitious with it.”

Uwland is preparing to join a Suns side that is no longer the competition easybeat.

Under Damien Hardwick, they finally ended their finals drought and even won a game in September. Another academy graduate, Dylan Patterson, is poised to be a top-five pick, too, while three others – Beau Addinsall, Jai Murray and Koby Coulson – could be bid upon before selection 40.

Uwland has grand plans to feature in the club’s inaugural premiership, and ideally with Bodhi by his side.

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They have played together only once, when Uwland was eight and Bodhi 12, for a junior Northern Rivers team in a practice game. Bodhi set up his little brother for their only goal that day, so they have come a long way.

“I define successful careers by premierships and games,” he said.

“All I want to do is play as many games as I can, and be available. My biggest goal is to play in round one [next year], so doing whatever I can for the team will help me get that.

“Anyone would love to be a part of a premiership, and doing that at the Suns would be pretty special, especially alongside my brother. Watching the Lions boys go about it, especially the first-year players, like Ty Gallop, Sam Marshall and Levi Ashcroft, shows you that it’s not that far away.”

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