Trent Cotchin
Australian rules footballer

Trent William Cotchin (born 7 April 1990) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is an All-Australian, a three-time Richmond best and fairest winner, a Brownlow medallist, and a three-time premiership winning captain. Cotchin represented the Victorian Metro side at the 2007 AFL Under 18 Championships and captained the Vic Metro side at 2006 Under 16 Championships. He played for the Northern Knights in the TAC Cup as a junior, before being drafted to Richmond with the second overall pick in the 2007 national draft. He led the club to a 37-year drought-breaking premiership in 2017 before taking them again to a premiership in 2019 and 2020.
Early life and junior football
Cotchin grew up in the northern Melbourne suburb of Reservoir and spent his later teenage years in the suburb of Wollert, 27 kilometres north of Melbourne. He played his junior football with West Preston Lakeside in the Northern Football League before moving on to play with the Northern Knights in the TAC Cup at the age of 16.
In 2006, Cotchin captained the Victorian Metro side in the under-16 national championships.
In January 2007, Cotchin spent time training with the Richmond Football Club senior list as a member of the AIS/AFL Academy. Cotchin later spoke of being taken under the wing of Richmond player, Brett Deledio.
The public source identifies “Trent Cotchin” as australian rules footballer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Trent, Cotchin and Australian.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7838382. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2007, 2006 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trent Cotchin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.