Round #20 - The rascal
Toby Greene
Every experience of Toby has the potential to take you to extreme places. He plays with defiance, from the look on his face and the confidence in his ability. You cannot take your eyes off him, with his capacity to exert his will and rare talent on the contest.
I just changed my mind.
I sat down to write this week’s ‘Moment of the Match’ with a clear idea in mind, even having a title, ‘The Villain’.
Instead, I have gone with ‘The Rascal’.
The player I am writing about is GWS Giants skipper, Toby Greene.
Perhaps the change has more to do with the fact that I mostly watch football from a comparatively neutral perspective, and have now done so for more than a decade.
If I had a little bit more skin in the game at a particular club, I am almost certain I would have gone with ‘villain’ and not ‘rascal’, and I am sure most reading this, other than GWS people, will think the harder line is appropriate, and accuse me of getting a bit soft in my old age.
It seems there is a paradox of proximity. Our moral lens seems to shift; the same behaviour that enrages us when it's "them" becomes endearing when it's "us.”
A rascal or a villain?
The answer reveals more about the observer than it does about the observed.
—
I have written previously that sport naturally creates hero and villain narratives, almost without trying, and no doubt, this is part of its appeal.
We all have our club heroes, and some are almost universal. The Western Bulldogs’ Marcus Bontempelli, respected for everything good about the game, comes to mind. Robbie Flower, the old Demon champ, was another.
They are rare and precious.
One of the reasons I am an advocate of State of Origin football is that we get to share these special players, like the days when the whole of Victoria had Robbie Flower on their team, if only for one game a year.
The game needs to create these moments, rising above its own parochialism.
But for the story to work, we need the villain.
You know the type. Love them if they're yours, but rile you when they wear the colours of any other team. As you read this, a player will be coming to mind, and there is a good chance that player is Toby Green.
But like the hero, we would like him to be ours, just for one day. Marcus Bontempelli side-by-side with Toby Greene, footy’s yin and yang, in the Big V, wouldn’t it be great?
There was a memorable day, many years ago, when Victoria took on South Australia at the MCG. A couple of generational villains, Dermott Brereton and Tony Lockett, donned the Big V. A capacity crowd cheered them as if they were their own, and they were for a couple of hours.
For those two hours, they were rascals, not villains.
—
I have heard it said that all the great teams have at least one player like this, continually inventing new ways to get under the skin of the opposition players and their supporters.
I am not sure if this is the case, there have been great teams who did without, but I do know the game needs them, the spice they bring, the extremes, the capacity to change the natural order of the game, with ridiculous talent or just plain ridiculousness. As much as we like to categorise players into a ‘type’, to try and make sense of them, there is no box to put them into.
To describe Toby Greene’s career over a decade, it would be as such. It seemed that there was so much going on around him that we lost sight of the genius of his play. I certainly did. Fortunately, that time is now well past, fully recognised when appointed captain of the All-Australian team in 2023.
Yet, the tension remains. Every experience of Toby has the potential to take you to extreme places. He plays with defiance, from the look on his face and the confidence in his ability. You cannot take your eyes off him, with his capacity to exert his will and rare talent on the contest.
You also hear stories of his wonderful generosity and care off the field, told in the most heartfelt ways by those who know him best.
But then there were the times when he would have tested the forbearance of his club, as one of the game’s most suspended players, almost inventing new ways for this to happen.
—
So it was on Friday night.
After one of the club’s great wins against the Sydney Swans in the Sydney Derby, playing sublime football, coming from 35 points down to record a 44 point win, limiting the Swans, who were well on top, to three scoring shots to twenty in the second half, all but ending Sydney's finals hopes and marking the Giants' first win in six Sydney Derbies.
Yet most of the post-match analysis was ‘Toby talk’, a player whose reputation is such that his name has become a noun, verb and adjective.
He was again treading that fine rascal/villain line, in what he said, and how he played.
Interviewed at half-time, when the Swans appeared in control of the game, he spoke of fellow rascal/villain, Sydney Swans protagonist, Tom Papley, "He's looking overweight, we'll see how he goes in the second half".
But an incident with Sydney champ Isaac Heeney was also sure to draw the scrutiny of the Match Review Officer, and so it did, and MRO Michael Christian went with ‘villain’, suspending Toby for one game.
He will miss this week’s crucial game against the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium.
Surprising to anyone?
Hardly.
It is in his nature.
—
As CEO of both Melbourne and Fremantle, we had our very own rascal/villain.
Universally known as 'The Whiz', the mercurial Jeff Farmer provided incredible joy with his match-winning mix of creativity and brilliance. He played with an intensity and edge that was part of his sporting genius and was loved by his club, coaches and teammates. However, this same edge would also land him in trouble, testing the team ethos and standards, particularly challenging the leaders who were required to uphold them.
As CEO, I was one of those leaders.
—
A wonderful fable of the frog and the scorpion comes to mind whenever I watch players like Toby and think of my experience working with the Whiz.
The fable tells of a scorpion who asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog refuses, fearing the scorpion will sting him, but the scorpion argues that it would be illogical, as they would both drown. Convinced by this reasoning, the frog agrees to help. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog.
As they both sink, the dying frog asks why, and the scorpion replies:
"It's my nature.”
—
I have often said that leadership is in the business of ambiguity.
I am not sure there wasn’t anything more ambiguous than the rascal/villain in my time as a CEO.
How do you channel the lightning without getting burned?
There is no doubt their talent afforded more opportunities, more second and third chances, than their less gifted counterparts.
There are more reasons than pure talent for why we make different calculations about these challenging high performers.
Part of the rascal/villain make-up is pure competitiveness, arguably the most valuable mindset of the elite athlete.
People often think of competitiveness in terms of ‘never beaten,’ but there is another critical, and potentially game-changing, element.
The great competitors can bounce back from the inevitable disappointments the game will ‘gift’ you, and the rascal/villain will be required to ‘bounce back’ more often, and they are good at it.
Think Shane Warne, the classic rascal/villain, and how he would return from the many controversies of his career, unaffected by the noise, and reminding us of his genius from the first ball he bowls.
It was in his nature.
—
As leaders, we seek to create the conditions for organisations and teams to perform at their best.
As part of this, we are often required to simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas, and the rascal/villain will present as this. In doing so, we potentially become complicit in their story, and need to decide whether we are okay with that.
Whilst everyone can grow and learn, the question for the rascal/villain isn't how to change their nature, it's how to lead, knowing it is unlikely they ever will.
Maybe that's their most remarkable talent of all. Not just changing games, but changing how we see the game.
Play on!
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