Round #13 - Living life forwards
When it is all said and done, more is said than done.
The way he sees life is that it will continually deal us hands of cards. Some hands are better than others, but it’s up to us to choose how we play those cards, and whilst we think we know, it is our response in the moment which is the measure.
“A wise man said, ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’ I understand the wisdom of this – right now, I don’t have much ‘forwards’ left.” - Neale Daniher
—
“He doesn’t leave much dust on the shelf, does he?”.
It is a quote I had never heard until that time and in the almost thirty years since. Yet I remember it vividly.
It was at the Junction Oval, the then-training base of the Melbourne Football Club. It was in the corridor outside the office of the senior coach, and the player who uttered these words had just had his first meeting with the newly appointed coach, Neale Daniher.
The player was Anthony McDonald, and I just happened to be passing by him in the corridor when I asked him how his meeting had gone.
I was very interested in any early feedback from the players on how they were experiencing the new coach, although I didn’t have much doubt. I was CEO of Melbourne, and we had recently appointed Neale as coach. I was confident we knew what we were getting.
Melbourne was the first club to embark on a multi-faceted and lengthy coach recruitment process, which would soon become a standard, and Neale emerged as the preferred candidate. It was his clarity of vision for the performance culture he would seek to build and the expectations he had for everyone associated with the club that was a key reason why he was selected (more on that later).
And we had a lot of work to do. The Demons were the reigning wooden spooners, finishing last with just four wins, half as many as the next-worst team.
Despite the club’s poor showing that season, Anthony McDonald had every reason to be feeling good about himself. He had taken some significant steps to finally establish himself as an AFL player, winning the Harold Ball Trophy as Melbourne’s Best First-Year Player.
He wasn’t your average recruit. For starters, he was 24, and this was his third crack at AFL football, having been previously drafted by Carlton and Hawthorn. His opportunity at Melbourne only opened up when his coach at Old Xaverians, where he played after being delisted at Hawthorn, former Richmond Premiership Player and coach Barry Richardson, now Chairman of Selectors at Melbourne, said there were three players at Old Xavs, who were clearly better than several players on the Melbourne list.
Such a statement would usually be scoffed at, but not when it comes from someone with the football insight and respect of Barry Richardson, particularly when he knew them intimately as both footballers and people.
It was just as well he was taken seriously because the three players, Anthony McDonald, his brother James, and Andrew Leoncelli, would go on to play over 500 games for Melbourne, all key players in the Neale Daniher coached Demons over the next decade.
Therefore, Anthony McDonald wasn’t your average wide-eyed young player. He had already felt the game’s capacity for heartbreak, the judgment of at least two clubs, that he did not have what it took to make it at this level. And therefore, he would bring more insight than most, and a key reason he had been given another opportunity was the maturity and character he brought to the young group.
But after meeting with the new coach, Anthony McDonald understood that his football life, of which he could be justifiably proud given the multiple setbacks and hard lessons learned, the backwards understanding that Neale described, could from this day onwards, only be lived forwards.
The bar had been lifted, and new standards set, and they could not be clearer.
And it would always be clear.
There would be no dust left on the shelf.
—
The measure of the person is in the response.
The last stage of the coach recruitment process I spoke of was a meeting with the then President of the Melbourne Football Club, Joe Gutnick.
Gutnick, someone not steeped in the traditions of the sport, who had emerged during Melbourne’s near merger with Hawthorn a year earlier, had already made a name for himself with what I would charitably describe as his ‘unfiltered’ take on the club, including criticising and threatening then Senior Coach, the highly respected Neil Balme, at half-time in a radio interview a few months earlier.
In the meeting with Neale Daniher, Gutnick asked him:
"What will you do when we lose seven games in a row?".
Neale responded, "Don't worry about me Joe, what will you do?".
Shelf dusted.
We appointed Neale that afternoon.
—
Define reality. Give hope.
The following year, the Neale Daniher coached Demons made it all the way to a Preliminary Final, falling one game short of a Grand Final.
It was the single biggest movement up the ladder in the game's history.
For a time, we dared to dream. No club has ever gone from last to Premiers in a season, and all of that seemed possible for a few weeks.
Dusting the shelf was a process of ‘defining reality’.
But he would match this with possibility, by seeing things in his players, his boys, that they were yet to see in themselves. He ‘gave hope’, but with the absolute expectation and understanding that the hope would only be revealed if you were prepared to meet and exceed the standards that he, and the competition itself, demanded of you in its most unforgiving and uncontrollable way.
And, even then, there would be no guarantees.
When the team came together for the final preparation for the next season, he again sought to give definition to the sport’s reality, recognising that all of us, me included, and his players, were perhaps basking in the nearly glory of the season prior.
“The game does not give up its rewards easily”, he reminded us.
There are no guarantees. No ultimate formula.
—
We build the child for the path, not the path for the child.
Neale Daniher addresses the young Melbourne players before the Queen’s Birthday game against Collingwood a decade or so ago. It is a big game for the improving Demons – the promise of an 80,000ish crowd at their home ground, the magnificent MCG.
Everyone in the room understands that their old coach is dying. He has Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and has known his fate for several years.
And while few of the young Demons in the room played under him, he is again their coach and mentor for those few precious minutes, and his minutes are the most precious.
To help them see possibility they are yet to see in themselves and each other. He sees it; he is a coach and always will be and can’t not be, but he needs them to not only see it but to truly believe it.
He speaks about the capacity to control our attitude.
The way he sees life is that it will continually deal us hands of cards. Some hands are better than others, but it’s up to us to choose how we play those cards, and whilst we think we know, it is our response in the moment which is the measure.
Building the child, knowing that the path for these young men, with all of their dreams and aspirations, will deal a hand that will be the test by which they will be measured.
It will be the hard days that define them.
“Life is good, but it doesn’t promise to be fair”, he explains.
—
When it is all said and done, more is said than done.
Whenever the old Demons get together, those who played under Neale Daniher, men like Anthony McDonald, now in their fifties, with plenty of life that they can now ‘understand backwards’, all have their stories of their respective shelves being dusted.
They love to tell them. Over and over, and they get together more often than most groups of old players do, because they have embraced the mantra of their old coach.
“When it is all said and done, more is said than done”.
Neale's Demon captain, a man he loved to coach, AFL Hall of Famer David Neitz, has rallied his old teammates, all playing their roles.
The tough love they received as young men became a deep love of the man a long, long time ago.
They do whatever they can to help their coach fight the ‘Beast’, as Neale named it when he was diagnosed a dozen years ago when he was dealt the toughest hand.
They share their love of Neale with the world, standing and applauding as their old coach is wheeled around the MCG on King's Birthday, a sea of MND blue beanies, Australian of the Year, having raised over $120 million dollars, through a guard of honour, the current Demons and their great rivals Collingwood, halting all game hostilities to honour this wonderful person, the coach, still playing the hand that he has been dealt.
The measure of the person is in the response.
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