As Australian cricketer Annabel Sutherland dashed away from the Geelong rooms at the MCG on Saturday to catch a flight to Adelaide for a state match on Sunday, Joel Selwood gave her a pat and said: “How good’s that No.14?”
In the euphoria of the celebration, Geelong’s latest and perhaps best-loved premiership captain somehow remembered that Sutherland wears No.14 for Australia in honour of him.
Geelong captain Joel Selwood on stage with Tyson Stengle.Credit:Getty Images
For a man legendary for never taking his eyes off the ball, Selwood spent much of grand final weekend – and the finale itself – looking out for others with almost pastoral vigilance. Pre-match, he carried former teammate Gary Ablett jnr’s infant son through the banner. During the match, he agitated – successfully – for medi-sub Brandan Parfitt to get a run and what was by then a certain medal.
On the podium post-match, he fulfilled a promise he’d made to Auskicker of The Year Archie Stockdale. “I told you I was coming to see you,” he said, and then he gave Archie his boots.
Joel Selwood with the premiership cup.Credit:Getty Images
On the lap of honour, Selwood helped to lever Geelong waterboy Sam Moorfoot, who has Down syndrome, over the fence and draped his medallion around his neck. In the rooms, he urged teammates to revel responsibly, to make sure they remembered the day, and nudged a younger teammate who momentarily might have been carried away.
In all Selwood did, there was an awareness and knowingness that generally comes only with experience. If a problem shared is a problem halved, a premiership shared is a joy redoubled.
All of his was without the least prejudice to his famous competitive instinct, which teammates and opponents alike aver has not in any way dimmed. If the Norm Smith Medal votes were counted at quarter-time on Saturday – after the live part of the match – he would have figured prominently.
Nor does it mean the captain cannot chiack with the best. When coach Chris Scott was asked on stage on Sunday when he knew the premiership was in Geelong’s safekeeping, he replied: “When Mitch Duncan had his first inside-50 tackle for the year.” Rejoined Selwood: “His first tackle.”
“Imagine being coach of a footy club and having Joel Selwood as your captain.”
Two-time Geelong premiership coach Chris Scott on Joel Selwood
Scott said that as his pre-match nerves began to jangle on Saturday, it was Selwood who soothed them. That is, one of the people Selwood was looking out for was his coach. “Imagine being coach of a footy club and having Joel Selwood as your captain,” said Scott.
Dual Brownlow medallist Chris Judd divided a footballer’s career into three phases. “In the third stage of your football career, if you’re lucky enough to get that far, you become human again,” he wrote in his 2015 autobiography.
Paddy Dangerfield and Joel Selwood after the grand final.Credit:Eddie Jim.
“For much of the first two phases, you are not really human in the ways society identifies as human. You’re a footballer … you’re almost an automaton. Now, though, you can relax a little, look around you, smell the roses.”
This is where Selwood is now. Arguably, this is where the Geelong team are now, except that today’s especially fragrant rose is the premiership that for more than a decade has hovered frustratingly just beyond the grasp of an otherwise admirably consistent and high-achieving club.
These Cats have more players 32 or older than 25 or younger, and are by a distance the oldest premiership team. Impossible to ignore at the Cats’ party on Sunday was the legion of children. An official tried to tally them, but failed. Veritably, the Cats are an army of dads, and there’s more to come; Selwood’s wife Brit is next on the production line.
Geelong’s skew to age is partly due to their philosophy to keep themselves always in flag contention, rather than to prune and regrow. It’s also a characteristic of the sporting times.
Roger Federer acknowledges the crowd after his final tennis match.Credit:Getty Images
Jimmy Anderson is still opening the bowling for England at 40 and his mate Stuart Broad is still tagging along at 36. In London this weekend, tennis farewelled 41-year-old Roger Federer, not long after its valedictory for 40-year-old Serena Williams. In Sydney on Sunday night, 41-year-old Lauren Jackson suited up again for the Opals.
Handsomely paid and abetted by more sophisticated sports science than ever, athletes can and do extend their Peter Pan lives. Paddy Dangerfield now has premiership and Brownlow medals and came within a few votes of adding a Norm Smith Medal on Saturday, too. At 32 and scrupulously careful about his sometimes rebellious body, he sees no reason to contemplate a different life.
Geelong celebrate in Geelong.Credit:Getty Images
“I love the game,” he said. “As soon as the passion isn’t there, as soon as you can’t contribute the way you want to contribute … personally, I don’t see that any time soon. I’m having too much fun.
“To be honest, we put so much time in at the club because we want to extract as much as we possibly can out of the players. Why not? It’s so hard to find talent and get and make it work together. Maybe it is one for the oldies.”
Here’s the point. None of these venerable athletes are on some sort of work-for-the-pension scheme. It’s not just that it’s good that they’ve lasted: they’ve lasted because they’re good. Geelong’s oldest players were their most influential players on Saturday, especially early in the game.
Not only that, they won playing a younger, speedier version of their game. “We wanted to play a bit more sexy,” said Selwood on the stage on Sunday, “and we were able to do that.” It might not be possible to teach an old dog new tricks, but these old Cats were all ears.
Privately, the senior Cats were supremely confident pre-match. Part of the getting of footy wisdom is insight. The unfolding of the match came as no surprise to them.
By the last quarter, the competitive period of the match long passed, they were dividing up the spoils. Dangerfield offered goal assists to anyone who ran past – Jeremy Cameron was grateful – Parfitt joined the party and 21-year-old key defender Sam De Koning ghosted forward to kick his first career goal.
In the impromptu prize-giving ceremony that was that last quarter on Saturday, the most popular goal was kicked by Selwood. Teammates nearly patted him into the ground. They were saying, as all of Geelong said, as the man himself said to cricketer Sutherland in the cacophony of the change rooms: “How good’s the No.14.”
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