Round #22 - The story goes on
Michael ‘Son-Son’ Walters
Perhaps it is my Fremantle background, but I have always loved watching Michael ‘Son-Son’ Walters play, and therefore chose to honour his career with my drawing.
But it was not only the player, but also the image itself and what it embodies.
The game.
Rarely do you give it up. It is a decision made for you, seldom by you. The judgement of someone who holds this power over you for at least that moment of your life.
Someone who gets to make a choice on what you do, but also, what you get to be, and even, who you are.
Whether you play, coach, or lead the game of football, you understand this day will come.
You are either 'in', with all the expectations that drive your day-to-day existence and mindset, or you are 'out'.
By living the game your entire life, you chose growth over fear long ago. It is the minimum expectation of elite sport as you navigate the many difficult transitions the game expects of you.
But did you have a choice? The game chose you at an age when you were incapable of this form of consciousness. It was a natural extension of you, and while there were setbacks, disappointments and heartbreak, there was also inspiration, encouragement and reward. The game's capacity for extremes grabbed you and wouldn't let go.
There were just enough "licks of the ice cream for kicks in the bum" to sustain you, as legendary AFL coach David Parkin explains, a great football man who was sacked at least a couple of times and with the courage and generosity to show us his scars.
And now, the game is letting you go, even though you'd given it everything. It is now asking something different of you, as you knew it would, but could not fully understand until it was time to clean out your locker.
You are expected to let go, but how can you? Former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton explained this paradox so artfully:
"I spent my whole life gripping a baseball, and in the end, I found out that all along, it was the other way around."
We all have a 'so far' story, and for those who have lived vicariously through the game, and can no longer do so, the prospect of creating a 'not yet' story is often beyond their cognition and conception.
It is the football person's Faustian pact, trading the glories of a 'first-life' for the appreciation that can only be understood in your 'second-life'.
—
The club.
This week, the football world watched on as the Boards of two AFL clubs made a choice on the most crucial appointment they make, their Senior Coach.
The Melbourne Football Club chose to move on their man, Simon Goodwin, one of only four coaches in the history of the game’s oldest club to lead their team to one of their thirteen Premierships, its first in 57 years, just four years ago.
‘Goody’ is a first-class coach, under any judgement, and those who think otherwise fully underestimate what he has achieved. Melbourne under Simon Goodwin achieved something generations of highly equipped groups of players, coaches, and administrators had failed to accomplish, not because they weren’t good enough, but because it is fucking hard.
For almost six decades, the Demons had failed to find a way in a competition where everyone is trying to find a way, and this is what it takes and why winning at this level is so rewarding. Melbourne supporters got to experience what they most likely thought they never would.
He will have no regrets knowing that he left nothing in terms of effort to get the best from his players, team, and club, and has some very rare Demon silverware to show for it. As a learner, he will have reflections, and the beneficiary of this wisdom will be the club that aligns its football future to a coach who offers so much.
A second club, Carlton, announced just a couple of days later that their coach, Michael Voss, would continue in his role.
At this point, I may be accused of bias, having worked with ‘Vossy’ as his coach for the past three years, primarily in relation to the leadership aspect of his role as Senior Coach.
There are few more respected people in the game, and that has certainly been my experience of him. He is an outstanding leader, with great presence and who remains present, even when things get messy, as they inevitably will. He is a self-directed learner and a deep thinker on the game and leadership, wholly focused on creating the conditions that enable the team to be the best it can be. He will always model the standards and expectations he seeks to embed in his team.
Accordingly, he is at his best when things get tough, as they have been for the Blues in 2025. Vossy has well and truly stood up on behalf of his club. Carlton has a great football man, and from the Board statements made this past week, they know it.
As in all things, but amplified in elite sport, blame, criticism, and deflection are easy, and they find friends just as easily. Solutions, however, are hard.
—
The story.
I was sacked twice as an AFL club CEO, both times by the Melbourne Football Club.
Some of the feelings are as visceral today as they were years ago. There is no anger, never was, but there is sadness, sometimes overwhelming, mostly how it permanently changed my relationship with the game, which still pumps through my veins as it did when I was that child, and always will.
But I had been on the other side of the table many times, as one of those people who, at that moment, held power over someone else's life.
In these moments, your 'failure' is being defined for you and not by you. Now the real work starts. The hardest form of work, and it will take time. Learning how to tell your own story, not the one told to you, or of you.
To learn that failure is a bruise, not a tattoo.
—
The game goes on.
As another football season comes to its pointy end, its treasures will soon be distributed.
For the recently retired, sacked or delisted, or soon to be retired, sacked or delisted, it becomes the reality they wake up to every morning. The game moves on. They are replaced, someone sitting in their chair, coaches box, or changing in their locker.
My reflections are mostly the footballers themselves, still very young but now facing their sporting mortality.
In the past few weeks, three outstanding players have announced their retirements.
The game waits for no one.
I think of two former skippers, GWS’s Callan Ward and Port Adelaide’s Travis Boak. Universally admired for all the reasons that make our game great, both in the conversation as their club’s best-ever contributors.
Again, they left nothing out there. Callan Ward played for 18 seasons, and Travis Boak for 19 years. To watch them speak to their teammates, announcing they are done, said so much about their wonderful humility.
Callan Ward captured what he valued as a footballer and as a teammate:
“I wanted to be the teammate you all knew would play my role, and do my job. I wanted to be the one you could trust in every moment, and especially in the big moments, and the big games. I never wanted to shirk a contest because it would let you down, and I never wanted to disappoint any of you. I never wanted to think ‘what if?’ because I was the player who didn’t train hard enough, or I was that player who didn’t focus on my weaknesses hard enough, so I made sure I did everything I could to get the most out of myself.”
Callan Ward announces his retirement
Perhaps it is my Fremantle background, but I have always loved watching Michael ‘Son-Son’ Walters play, and therefore chose to honour his career with my drawing.
But it was not only the player, but also the image itself and what it embodies.
In his later games of his storied career, Sonny would often celebrate a goal with the ‘M’ hand gesture, for the Perth suburb of Midland, where he grew up.
He is respecting his own origin story, the shoulders he stands on, and letting those now living there know that he is happy for them to stand on his.
“Midland is the place I found the fun of the game, the love of the game", Sonny explains*.*
"It is somewhere I’m proud of, and I just want to make sure that I try to drive a lot of the younger generation to come and play footy and boys and girls to reach their goals. No matter what area you’re from, not that Midland is bad, just to be a role model and be proud of who you are and where you’re from.”
—
The club goes on.
What meant everything now means something much less.
All of body and mind were committed to a cause. Something bigger than you and your (now former) teammates. A privilege, a brotherhood or sisterhood, and a system designed to get the best from you. Now life seems loose and vague, and part of you is left wondering what it was about.
Writer Anson Cameron explains it wonderfully in his biography 'Neil Balme - A Tale of Two Men', an outstanding insight into one of the most influential leaders in the sport as a player, coach and administrator.
"In his book War, Sebastian Junger observes: One of the most traumatic things about combat is having to give it up . . . when men say they miss combat, it’s not that they actually miss getting shot at – you’d have to be deranged – it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life."
Listen to Neil Balme on our 'In the Arena' podcast, "The Multiplier Effect"
I have learned there can be a lack of compassion for the ex-athlete, which is unfair.
I have regular conversations with people who seem to take satisfaction in retelling a story, mostly hearsay and scuttlebutt, about someone who enjoyed a profile in the game, now struggling with their transition. The sentiments are often ugly. For all the idolisation, for some there is also a kind of envy, those who enjoy the revenge the sport is exacting on the ex-footballer as they struggle to find a life beyond the game. This can leave them vulnerably alone and too proud to admit it.
The bruise can become a tattoo.
Being a footballer isn't just something to do; it is something to be, identity and purpose aligned from the moment they realise they possess something, a talent, that few others have. They found something they loved and were good at, a place we all dream of and aspire to, but so hard to find, and they discovered it when all other aspects of who they are were only just forming.
It is also likely that they are significantly better at football than anything else in their life, and they've devoted everything since childhood to getting even better at it.
Then it stops, and they are expected to make peace before they've unstrapped their ankles.
For those who can walk away knowing they have nothing left to give and have left a legacy that they can carry with them, there is a wonderful sense of peace, at least for that moment.
In AFL clubs, footballers soon work it out. Grow up fast and age slowly. But age they must. The game they love will eventually wear them out. It will be done with them before they're done with it.
The hearts of Callan, Travis, and Sonny were still willing, but the bodies were unable to withstand the game's ruthlessness any longer.
—
The story goes on.
Post their playing career, footballers are required to pick up the remnants of many things, and this may include important relationships.
Friends and family they'd moved away from in their teens. Partners who experienced the often surreal existence and lifestyle of the high-profile athlete, but also had to deal with the highs/lows, heartbreak, moods and the selfishness the game exacted and demanded.
Initially, there may be support from those who surrounded them during their time in the game. Care but without the eagerness and perhaps the urgency their situation requires. This support will fade unless mutuality remains in the relationship, which is rare. It moves on to the current breed of players, their proximity and the hope they represent.
But even for prepared, insightful and wise young men like these three players, the transition from first life to second life will require a purging of emotions, hopefully in a broadly healthy form. While they may be surrounded by loved ones and increasingly helpful support structures, they will need to learn to go deep to go forward. Build consciousness and then capability, and this is where they will do their best work.
It will need to happen in them, to happen through them.
At so many levels, the footballer receives the most extraordinary education and learning, evidenced by Callan, Travis and Sonny, often underestimated outside of the sport, much of which can be taken into the next life.
The daily discipline and the will to compete. The mindset and selflessness required to 'know their role, accept their role and play their role' in a relentlessly team-based environment. They are given leadership roles before most of their peers have left uni. They learn how to bounce back from setbacks, failure and disappointment. In a game of errors, learn to make as few as possible whilst having the confidence to still take risks.
There is light, perhaps meaning, only understood in retirement, and they are often reminded of this as a former player, coach, CEO of an AFL club. Part of them will always be on the 'In the arena', something they can be forever proud of.
But it is not a standard by which their life should be measured or how they define themselves, but an opportunity to 'begin again'.
Play on!
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