Finals #1 - It’s time for the game to win deep
Isaac Quaynor and Collingwood won deep.
It is time for the game to win deep.
"Your words tell others what you think, your actions tell them what you believe", TD Jakes.
I started my career in the game with a simple idea.
I just wanted to ‘do well’.
I knew enough that, really, there was only one measure of this, and that was winning.
You win, you do well.
The oldest of stories, as dominant today as it was with the ancients, the desire to hold some form of power over someone or something.
“Whatever it takes”, was the mantra.
It was the way.
The ‘old way’, etched in the annals.
There was so little choice in the aspiration, and therefore no need for any other form of conversation.
It did not ask or demand any form of nuance as it related to me or us; we would just sign up and join in, fight and jostle with each other, with little expectation or understanding of the cost, personally and collectively.
But there was also fear. And lots of it.
A fear of not being good enough, judged not just by you, but others, some form of old-fashioned story sport creates for itself, and rolls out year after year.
And even when I/we won, it was never enough.
The feelings would creep back in, almost immediately. A nagging self-doubt, ideas of worth, hidden by the avatar of ‘confident leader’ that I had materialised and commoditised, and did my best to fit into.
This led to behaviours that I am not proud of, attaching myself to a comparative possibility, never enough.
The ‘old way’ was no longer serving me well, and in hindsight, was never going to.
I needed to find a ‘new way’.
So I went to work. No, that is not right, I needed to go to work. It was an intervention of sorts, from a place of love, and my well-being and that of others depended on it.
I needed to work on my inner game to enable the outer game, which I had worked so hard on for such a long time.
It started with a different definition of ‘doing well’.
I slowly learned that ‘doing well’ was about the joy in the struggle, the richness of the endeavour, doing something worthwhile and challenging together, testing what we’ve got, the spirit of the contest, with people with whom you deeply care for, not judging worth or value by the scarcity of a potential outcome that was mostly out of my or our control.
The same blood, sweat and tears, but a whole new context on what ‘doing well’ actually meant to the collective.
I started telling myself a different story, built on a whole different set of principles.
Leading sport psychologist Pippa Grange defines these two states wonderfully. I had to move from ‘winning shallow’ to ‘winning deep’.
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But old stories die hard.
Just as I found myself drawn back to 'winning shallow' when competitive pressures overwhelmed my stated principles, so too does the game itself.
For all the good it does, and its want to ‘win deep’, it is often taken to some other place by forces at play in a sporting competition of such size and complexity.
Watching from my loungeroom as the boos echoed around Adelaide Oval each time Collingwood star Isaac Quaynor took possession of the ball revealed so much about what so many in that crowd believed.
And it is ugly.
They were booing a player who had been identified, not by choice, as being the subject of a homophobic slur.
The game has reason to doubt itself again.
Isaac Quaynor and Collingwood won deep. It is time for the game to win deep.
Football has had many ‘shallow’ moments and worse in its long history, such that they have both defined it, and also become a catalyst for the change it needed to make.
But it has also missed such opportunities, and continues to pay the price, which is even more reason to learn.
By definition, the courageous conversation is the one we don’t want to have.
I learned that discomfort marks the place where the old way meets the new way. The need to push through. It is a place of vulnerability and courage. If it doesn’t challenge you, it will not change you.
It needs to redefine what ‘doing well’ means, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last.
It is more than crowd numbers, television audiences, and participation rates.
It needs to go to work, as we like to say in footy when there is a need to confront what is staring us in the face. Repair its ‘inner game’ to fix its ‘outer game’, stop telling us how it thinks, but show us what it believes.
Define reality. Give hope.
Yes, there will be fears, doubts, as well as a concerted pushback by those who believe in power over minorities rather than power to, for reasons best known to them. Those same people think that bullying a person in their workplace is somehow acceptable when it is hidden in the guise of a game of football.
“Whatever it takes”, they will say.
‘Winning deep’ asks a whole lot more of you, but as leaders, that is what we have signed up for.
And for those who think it will never change, I have a lot more belief in our game.
It will come from a place of love.
And the game will have done well.
Play on!
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