A career has to start somewhere

Due to the recent heavy rains in Sydney, my collection of chess books and magazines continues to grow (the results of a 'flood' clearance came my way). In amongst the grab bag of items I received is a NSW Junior Chess magazine from October 1986. In this particular issue was a report on the 1986 City of Sydney Junior Chess Championship. It makes fascinating reading, because I am reminded that a number of well known chess identities were juniors once.
The Under 18 event contained Malcolm Stephens, future IM Shane Hill, Colin Davis and Greg Canfell. Further down the standing were Martin Barakat and Mario Falchoni. In the under 15's both Jeremy Hirschhorn and Jason Lyons took part, with the winner being Danny Stojic. However the most interesting event may well have been the Under 11's. In third place was Joel Veness, who later turned his energy to computer chess, while 4th place was taken by tournament debutante Joseph Roff from Armidale. Of course in the case of Joseph, the chess career never really took off, but he seemed to do reasonably well at Rugby, playing 86 games for the ACT Brumbies, and 86 games for Australia.