Round #12 - You belong here
Steele Sidebottom
He is pure footballer, has the ‘footy chip’ as we like to describe it. The game chose him. He has always reminded me of a country footballer playing in the big league. He plays with a pure love of the game and with joy in an often joyless world that seems keen to retire him, or at least reduce what he still brings.
They must not have been watching.
The Hawks are playing Richmond at the MCG. It is a big occasion for the Hawks, with the match aptly chosen to celebrate Hawthorn’s 100th year in the AFL, marking their first game against Richmond in 1925.
The coach, Sam Mitchell, huddles the team for the last word before they run down the race and cross the white line to take on the young Tigers. The old players have gathered in the rooms, and while all the markers of the passing years since their heydays are evident in faces, bodies, and scars, most are immediately recognisable.
For every decade since their first Premiership in 1961, the Hawks have won silverware, and the gathering is made up of many multiple Premiership players, Hall of Famers and Legends of club and game.
And Sam Mitchell is one of them, a champion player, Premiership captain, and he straddles past, present and future, a famed part of their ‘So Far’ story, but with responsibility for their ‘Not Yet’ story.
The combination of a ‘So Far’ story and a ‘Not Yet’ creates an ‘Us Story’. I've taken the concept of an ‘Us Story’ from Owen Eastwood’s wonderful book ‘Belonging’. Amongst the many layers of profound wisdom is what Owen describes as the human need to find, as he did, “a place where the three most powerful words that can be uttered to you are ‘you belong here’.”
Many of these old players might not feel like they still belong, but they are part of what Owen Eastwood defines as Whakapapa, which he describes as:
“Just as happens with each passing day, the sun slowly moves down this unbreakable chain of people. Each of us will have our time in the sun. But the sun is always moving. Moving towards the west, where it will finally settle. When the sun shines on us we are alive, we are strong. For we have had passed down to us a culture that immerses us in deep belonging. We feel safe and respected. We share beliefs and a sense of identity with those around us and this anchors us. We share a purpose with them. We share a vision of the future. We fit in here. Rituals and traditions tie us together. The experiences and wisdom of those who walked in the light before our time are passed on to us.”
—
Sam Mitchell calls the old players into the huddle with the current players, all kitted out and strapped, ready for battle.
Soon, they are one. The old Hawks and the young Hawks, unblinking, drinking in every word from Mitchell, now all of their coach, as they did with Kennedy, Parkin, Jeans and Clarkson et al.
“Everyone in this circle feels the weight you feel", explains Mitchell. "The weight of the crowd, the weight of expectation, the weight of wearing the brown and gold jumper. Not everyone gets to understand what that means, and for everyone who is not wearing that jumper, there is a little bit of us, and sometimes a lot of us, that wishes we got to cross that white line just one more time. So we get to the top of the race, and that is as far as we all get to go. But we have to stop there, stop before that white line. So when you get up there today, and you cross that white line, make sure you make the most of those opportunities because there’s nothing most of us wouldn’t give to do that even just one more time. This club is built on the people who are surrounding this circle right now.”
Watch Sam Mitchell address the Hawks, young and old
—
The game.
Rarely do you give it up. It is a decision made for you, seldom by you. The judgement of someone, be it a coach or doctor, 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 who you are.
Whether you play, coach, or lead the game of football, you understand this day will come.
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.
Enough “licks of the ice cream for kicks in the bum”, says David Parkin, the legendary AFL coach who guided the Hawks to a Premiership in just his second year at the helm, a great football man, sacked at least a couple of times and with the generosity to show us his scars.
And now, the game is excluding you, letting you go, despite the fact 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 said:
“I spent my whole life gripping a baseball, and in the end, I found out that all along, it was the other way around.”
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’.
—
For those who can walk away knowing they have nothing left to give, and have left a legacy, one they can carry with them, there is a wonderful sense of peace, at least at that moment.
They are the shoulders on which others stand.
All of this comes to mind as I watch Collingwood’s Steele Sidebottom in season number seventeen.
He is nearing this phase. Actually, he has been in this phase for years.
He has always been a player difficult to categorise in a world that seems to take comfort in doing so. Whilst his game could never be defined in statistical measurements, in just about all of them, he is in career-best form, an integral part of a Collingwood team that is the one to beat as of Round 12 2025.
Steele Sidebottom is pure footballer, has the ‘footy chip’ as we like to describe it. The game chose him. He has always reminded me of a country footballer playing in the big league. He plays with a pure love of the game and with joy in an often joyless world that seems keen to retire him, or at least reduce what he still brings.
They must not have been watching.
I doubt this is any motivation for him; he loves the game, his club, and his teammates too much for that.
So he just plays. Beautifully.
The sun continues to shine on him, but he knows his day is coming.
And when it does, he will have left nothing out there, but will have carried forward the very best of the ‘Side-By-Side’ of his Collingwood generation.
Loved and respected.
A champ.
Play on!
My work builds on the belief that leadership is the defining characteristic of every great organisation or team.
You cannot outperform your leadership.
Our offering is designed for leaders who know that personal leadership effectiveness drives team and organisational performance and that there must be a better, more efficient and effective way to learn leadership.
Feel free to connect, or make contact
