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http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/the-bryce-is-right/2008/07/19/1216163236652.html
Bryce Gibbs has had to deal with the usual pressure that shadows No. 1 selections.
But he was born tough.
Bryce Gibbs has had to deal with the usual pressure that shadows No. 1 selections.
But he was born tough.
WHEN Bryce Gibbs was two, his dad threw him into the family's backyard swimming pool. He wanted to see what his tiny mind, legs and floatie-free arms would do, and he can still remember watching Bryce splash his way to the wall.
"I threw him in and he was kicking around and going crazy," Ross Gibbs recalled this week. "Even when he was a little kid, I liked to throw a few left-field things at him, just to see what would happen.
"My wife went absolutely nuts, but Bryce just calmed down and got himself across to the side. He worked it out on his own. I just sort of watched him, to see what he'd do, and he was fine. He could always fend for himself. It was just built inside of him somehow."
Long before he got to Carlton as the No. 1 pick in the 2006 AFL national draft, Gibbs was swimming in the deep end. As a just-turned 17-year-old, people sought his thoughts on the father-son rule that didn't let him head straight to Adelaide despite his father's 200-plus game career at Glenelg. Even before the Blues picked him, everyone seemed to keep asking if and when he would leave them.
At the time, Gibbs was not particularly worried about what was said to, around and about him. He had an ability to not to get caught up in it, which meant it hardly mattered how much talk there was.
But looking back, the assumption that he would at some stage leave - before he had even started out - was annoying. "It was, a bit," he said. "A lot of questions were being asked about whether I was going back to Adelaide, and when, but in my head I was thinking a lot of completely different things.
"I felt as new to it all as the other boys who got drafted. I was living with a new family, so that was different; I was living in a new city and I can remember even sitting down with Tony Liberatorewho was one of our coaches, and working out some goals.
"We talked about the pre-season, and trying to play between 10 and 15 games, and being consistent and working hard on my tackling. But there were other things, like by the end of the season I wanted to know every trainer's name, every masseur's name.
"There was a challenge in that as well. I'd just gotten drafted and I was overwhelmed by it, like everyone who got drafted. The last thing in the world I was thinking about was whether I'd be leaving, or whether I'd even want to leave. The future felt like a long way away."
It was partly to avoid similar questioning that Gibbs quietly extended his contract for two more years - until the end of 2010 - a few weeks into this season; it was also because he feels settled, but challenged, part of a group who can achieve good things, and he has made some good friends whom he feels no need to leave.
Gibbs still speaks most days with his mother, Julie. "Even if there's nothing to talk about, she'll make something up," he smiled. He's spending a second year with the family of Shane O'Sullivan, Carlton's football administration manager, and works one day a week on various building sites around Melbourne.
As he was being inducted into the Blues' leadership group last year, the teenager was also figuring out how to simply get to the places he needed to be. "Melbourne's not as bad as I thought it would be, but it took me a good six months to work out how to get to places," he said.
"When I first came over, Mark Austin was staying with the O'Sullivans as well and we sort of learnt quickly by getting lost and trying not to use the Melways. We'd be getting lost and having fights in the car about where we were going - I was almost going to push him out and drive off a few times, we were getting that mad at each other. But we always ended up working it out. That's how you learn, I suppose. We got a lot better at it."
Gibbs' education has continued this year. In a way, it has seemed that as soon as the intense scrutiny of his debut season let up - it was as if the world needed to know if he was good enough, or worthy of being the No. 1 pick immediately - he began to prove that he was, well and truly.
This year, he has done things that needed doing. Already, he is one of the more versatile players in the Carlton team. Against Port Adelaide six weeks ago, he played on and beat Chad Cornes; against Richmond three weeks back, he slipped forward and scored three goals. Two of his best games this season have been against St Kilda. In round two against the Saints he had 26 disposals and took 12 marks. He followed this up by collecting a career-high 28 disposals against them in round 15. He is averaging six more disposals and three more contested possessions a game this season.
He is fitter than he was in his first year, and can feel it. "Come the last few minutes of the third quarter," he said, "I still feel like I have a lot to give." He plays with poise, and calm, and could end up anywhere on the ground, although Brett Ratten knows where he'd like him to spend most time.
"I see him playing most of his football for us as a midfielder," said the Carlton coach. "He can do a lot of things and he has a lot of versatility, but before he does anything else, he wins the football. That's what we'll need him doing for us."
It has never occurred to Gibbs that he is anything other than a young footballer, as well as a young person. He can remember worrying when he was sent to play on James Hird in an early game last year, not doubting himself but still feeling a little disconnected from what was happening in his life.
"I wondered if I was up to it, a lot," he said. "I didn't really question myself, and I'd obviously always wanted to do it, but he was one of my idols growing up and to be asked to play on him, it was a bit of a shock and a funny feeling, like what am I doing out there running around with these guys? It wore off, but in the beginning it was just a really weird experience, like it was happening to someone else."
He wondered also about whether it was a good thing for him to join the leadership group, "just because of what people might perceive of me, walking in like I knew everything", however a year on, he considers it a positive experience too. "I just sort of sat in there and took it all in. I think Marc Murphy did pretty much the same thing," he said.
"It was a good chance, I guess, to see what went on and what people thought and how they dealt with things. It's something I think I'll be better off for. I didn't do it thinking of myself as a leader, I did it for the experience, and I think it was a good one."
Should his career keep unfolding so smoothly, Gibbs will be pushing the 50-game mark while still a teenager. To Ratten, he shows no signs of still being a kid. "I just never see that," he said. "It's more the other side of the coin. But ask Shane O'Sullivan ..."
O'Sullivan has seen Gibbs become immersed in the occasional game of Monopoly with his own kids, but thinks mostly of his maturity, too. "I always enjoy seeing him with his dad," he said. "They're so close, and they're different personalities, but they have this really good way with each other," he said. "Sometimes it's like Bryce is the father and Ross is the son. They get along so well."
When Bryce is back home, Ross Gibbs likes getting home from work and seeing his son battling it out on the Nintendo, or sitting chatting with his two sisters. "Sometimes you see this little glimpse that he's still a boy," he said. "You don't see it all that often though."
But it's when he's in Adelaide that Bryce is reminded of how young he really was when he jumped so quickly into his football career. He has one sister, Macey, in her last year of primary school and another, Kelly, who is almost as old as he was when he moved away from home.
He has noticed his relationship with both girls change, as all of them have grown a bit older, and it has made him think. "My little sister's about to go into high school and I said to my mum the other week, 'Did I seem as young as Macey when I was doing that?' " he said.
"She said 'yeah, you were,' but I suppose you never think of things like that when you're just going along in your life. My other sister's 17 now and she's starting to do all the things I was going through at that stage, like starting to go out and getting to the end of school.
"She's becoming that bit more mature so I can have more adult conversations with her now. I sort of miss that, but it's still a bit crazy to think that when I was her age, I was moving out of home and doing all these things. It seems a bit unreal. You do have to grow up in a short time, I suppose."
