"This is it. This is my first acting," the 18-year-old from Warmun​ in the eastern Kimberley says. "It's a pretty big step."

He'd never been to drama school, "but I went to school", he says proudly. That's where he heard about a TV series that was looking for young footy-playing blackfellas, from a teacher who'd spotted the casting call on Facebook.

"She said, 'Gordan, do you love acting?' I said, 'Oh, a little bit'. She said, 'It's about footy'. I said, 'Footy? OK, I'll go do that'."

The Warriors is an eight-part series being made for the ABC about four young AFL recruits who share a house and get up to mischief in the run-up to their first game for the fictional Warriors.

John Howard, who played the recruit in the 1980 movie The Club before becoming Australia's most-loved small-town villain Bob Jelly in SeaChange, is in it as the club president. Lisa McCune is the communications manager assigned to look after the boys, and Vince Colosimo their coach.

Robert Connolly (Balibo, Paper Planes), who created the show with Tony Briggs (The Sapphires), says The Warriors is meant to be "a fun Entourage-style comedy. It's about football, but it's not about football."

To make sure the bit that's about football is up to scratch, they have Brownlow medallist Peter Bedford as technical adviser, and he took the key cast through a three-day skills camp before filming began. "The last thing we want is to have people who love footy watching it and going, 'That's not how you kick'," says Connolly.

But the focus is firmly on the four young men. "The challenges they face, they lose their sponsor, there's bad behaviour," he says.

So it's a documentary then? "It's a documentary," he laughs.

For Churchill, there is in fact more than a touch of real life about it all. When I ask him if he wants to be an actor, he says without a second's hesitation: "Nah. I want to be an AFL player."

He looks to Indigenous players such as Adam Goodes, Nicky Winmar, Cyril Rioli and Eddie Betts, as well as to Fijian-born Nic Naitanui, as sources of inspiration.

"I want to be like them, watch me on the big telly," he says.

He used to be "pretty bad with sweets and sugar" but he's turned his life around, begun to train harder, look after his body.

"There was worse stuff," he adds, hinting at darkness but never shedding his huge smile. "I had to break the cycle of drinking."

You were drinking?

"Nah, people around me. I had to say, 'I don't want to do that. I want to be more, better person', so people can stop all that and look at me or look at whoever and say, 'Let's stop this'."

There's talk of a meeting with St Kilda. But there's hopes for a second season of The Warriors, too, if this one lives up to expectations.

Whatever happens, though, Gordan Churchill is off to a flyer and he couldn't be happier.

"It's been a dream," he says.

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin