[5] He shares a relation to Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee and 1993 Brownlow Medalist Gavin Wanganeen[6] as well as being the first cousin of former AFL player Danyle Pearce.
[7] As a child, Rankine played an array of sports which included basketball, rugby and tennis but eventually chose to focus on Australian rules football.
[citation needed] In 2016, he played his first senior SANFL game for West Adelaide at the age of 16 and kicked two goals on debut.
[15] Persistent hamstring and hip injuries prevented him from making his AFL debut in 2019[16] but the Suns showed faith in Rankine by agreeing to a two-year contract extension which tied him to the club until the end of 2022.
For Sir Doug Nicholls Round, Rankine and his cousin Harley Hall designed Adelaide's (renamed for the occasion as Kuwarna) Indigenous guernsey, celebrating their shared Ngarrindjeri heritage.
[29] With moments to go and a single-digit margin in a match against Collingwood at the MCG, Rankine gave away a free kick for running further than 15 meters without taking a bounce, denying a potential game-saving score for Adelaide.
[33] In only his second game since returning from suspension, during the second quarter of the 56th Showdown against cross-town rivals Port Adelaide, Dan Houston engaged in rough conduct with Rankine.