Former minor and U20 Madden makes debut for Brisbane Lions

Former Dublin minor dual player and U20 footballer James Madden made a winning Australian Rules debut for Brisbane Lions on Saturday.

The Ballyboden St Enda's man helped his side to an impressive 93-44 victory over Port Adelaide.

"It was pretty perfect (debut result) I guess. It was a good team performance and we really got the job done today," said James in his post-match interview.

The Ballyboden St Enda's speedster admitted he was nervous in the early stages of the contest but settled quickly enough.

"After I got my first touch, yes, but before that it was pretty nerve wracking to be honest. After I got a few touches it was just like a normal game of footie."

James represented Dublin's minor footballers in 2016 and '17 - winning a Leinster MFC in his second year while in 2018 he was on the Dublin U20 team that lost in the Leinster final to Kildare prior to his move to Oz.

Madden first caught the eye of the Lions recruiting staff in December 2017 when he broke the all-time AFL Draft Combine 20-metre sprint record at the European Combine in UCD, clocking a time of 2.69 seconds.

He broke into the Ballyboden team before the start of the 2018 Dublin club SFC - scoring a superb individual goal (1-2 in total) in their opening game of their round-robin section, a 3-12 to 1-11 loss to eventual champions Kilmacud Crokes.

James last lined out for Boden when after returning home for the Christmas of 2019 he came on as a sub for the southsiders in their All-Ireland club SFC semi-final loss to Down's Kilcoo in January 2020.