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- Sep 7, 2007
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When youth drive the standards (Luke Hodge)
I wasn’t sure what to expect this time around. Last year was easier in a way because everything was different. Team. City. Role. All brand new. That meant the focus was pretty simple: meeting the guys, making a good early impression and getting to know the coaches. Expectations and goal-setting would come later.
But this year was something else again. We’d had 12 months together and made progress along the way. Where would our standards be this time? Where would the bar be set?
I got back from holidays a little bit early and I thought I would check in for a few additional running sessions with the boys. At that time of year, you might’ve expected three, four or five guys going about their work. But when I looked around, there were 20. I was quite shocked.
Most of the group were younger players, all wanting to hit the pre-season flying. A lot of the time at a footy club you’ll find the younger guys will wait for the older ones to come back – usually a couple of weeks after they start – to set the standards. But here at the Lions it was the young blokes driving those standards in the lead-up to Christmas.
It was guys like Jarrod Berry and Harris Andrews leading from the front and taking the next step towards returning the Lions to the glory days of the early 2000s. It was Darcy Gardiner and Hugh McCluggage and Alex Witherden and Cam Raynor pushing everyone along. There were plenty of other contributors, too, challenging the wider group to improve. It was awesome to see. It demonstrated to me just how much they were determined to get the best out of themselves. It also showed how far they’d come as a group in 12 months. They weren’t waiting for direction. They were setting it. The coaches were impressed and so were the senior players, me among them.
We’ve also played more matchplay prior to round one than I’ve experienced at any other stage of my career, largely because we’re a younger team and we needed to make sure everyone understood the blokes around them – who’s on their left, who’s on their right, what way they roll. That box has been ticked. The level of understanding within the group is high. Of course, pre-season fades pretty quickly from memory once the real stuff starts.
A BOX OF MEMORIES
We’ve just bought a house in Brisbane. When we first moved here we took out a two-year rental. We were covering ourselves a bit in case things didn’t go well, or if the kids weren’t enjoying it, so we could move back to Melbourne without too many hurdles in the way. But that hasn’t been the case. We’ve loved every minute of it. Coops is playing more footy than he was in Melbourne and Chase has started basketball. The weather is brilliant so they’re outside kicking the footy and shooting hoops with their mates 12 months a year. Leo’s loving it, too.
Like all good marriages, my wife ultimately decided what we were doing. Loz had kept her eye on the market for three or four months while we were discussing our options and, when she found the place that was right for the family, we jumped on it. It’s only ten minutes from the Gabba, so I’m getting home for lunch a lot more than I used to.
During the move, I was going through some of my old boxes and found a folder with a bunch of leadership material from the period after we’d lost the 2012 grand final and before we went on our run of three premierships in a row.
It outlined our strengths and weaknesses as leaders and players. It also detailed the standards we focused on as a leadership group, topics that came up in meetings and other related stuff. I matched it all up with some notes I’d kept on my computer from those leadership meetings six or seven years ago. There was some fascinating ground covered.
What really struck me was how pointy we were as a group at Hawthorn. People spend a lot of time worrying about not hurting others’ feelings but, in that particular group, we gave some pretty honest, confronting feedback to each other. It was always taken the right way because it was said in the spirit of making each other better. If you want to be a true friend, you have to give your teammates honest feedback.
I spoke to a few people around the Lions about whether they thought it might be something the broader group would benefit from. I didn’t want to just walk in and go, ‘This is what Hawthorn did here, and this is what we did there, and this is what you should do, too.’ It’s not about copying everything the Hawks did back then and applying it here. That wouldn’t be the right approach.
The view among those I spoke to was that there were areas covered that might help the Lions, or at least give them some options. Maybe at some point during the season it’ll be something that starts a few conversations – something the boys will benefit from.
THE SEASON AHEAD
I know my best footy is behind me. I can still do a few things OK, but I’ll be turning 35 in a couple of months, so my role within the team isn’t what it used to be. The boys don’t mind reminding me of this. The banter flies thick and fast around the club. The Raynors and the Witherdens of the world refer to me as ‘Fossil’ and any other old-timers gag they can think of. They’re cheeky buggers, but so was I at that age so I can’t be too hard on them.
Witherden needs to be careful, though. He owes me about ten lunches and I haven’t called in the debt yet. We have little skills challenges after training, things like goals from the pocket, with a little side wager on the result. You’d reckon he’d be beating an old fella like me – he was three when I made my AFL debut! – but he struggles. I let him know this from time-to-time.
Banter aside, my primary job at the club as I’ve seen it has been to pass onto Dayne Zorko and the guys what I’ve learned through the years – and I’ve been fortunate enough to play with and against a lot of very good players, and work with some absolute professionals off the field. That role will probably change slightly this year. The guys have picked on many of the points we were raising last season about our on-field standards. It happened quickly, sometimes right then and there during games. They weren’t waiting for the review on Monday.
It can be a balancing act, knowing when to step back and when to get involved. What really struck me was how pointy we were as a group at Hawthorn. People spend a lot of time worrying about not hurting others’ feelings. Holding your tongue in meetings can be challenging at times. The coach will sometimes ask a question and you’re looking around, waiting for one of the younger guys to respond. I’ve been doing this since 2002 – so you’d hope I’d know most of the answers by now! – but it can’t always be the senior blokes doing the talking. That would allow the younger ones to sit back and get a free ride, which wouldn’t be helping their development.
That said, there are also times when you need to jump on the front foot. If there’s a bit of confusion around certain issues, you’ve got to clear it up straightaway so people aren’t running off in all directions. It’s all about timing and knowing the right moments to speak up.
And it’s not all one-way either. Sometimes, I’ll throw things up to the leadership group and leave it to them to decide whether they act upon them on not. Some things they like. Some things don’t suit them at that stage. With leadership groups, the trick is often to get them thinking and tweaking smaller things around the team – maintaining a happy place, ensuring the standards are upheld by everyone, those kinds of things.
The expectation last season was always on development, but we’re starting to get quite a lot more pointy about what we’re doing this year. The Lions were beaten by ten goals-plus a number of times in 2016 and 2017. That happened just the once last year. I think we earned back some respect from the competition. The win against the West Coast on the weekend was a good start. Now we have to build on it.
SMFC | BULLS 
