They Might Be Giants

GWS star Tom Scully and coach Kevin Sheedy

I’ve been thinking about writing a piece on this subject for much of the 2013 AFL season and finally got around to it now. We are currently entering Round 19 of the season and the GWS Giants are still yet to win a game this season, after winning two games in the 2012 season. Now it is not a surprise to anyone that the Giants have struggled dramatically on the field in their first two seasons. The way the AFL expansion was set up, it has the new teams be awful early on, but with a dearth of young talent and draft picks to develop and be great by year four or five, as we are just starting to see the signs of with the Gold Coast Suns in their third season.

The problem isn’t the lack of success on the field for the Giants, but rather the lack of success off it. Whilst obviously if the Giants were doing better on the field it would then be easier to grow their fan base, the fact that it was made clear to everyone that the on field results wouldn’t be there should have allowed them to establish a decent core base of fans from which to grow. Unfortunately, that core base to get involved from the jump didn’t materialise in large enough numbers.

Now it may sound like it is purely a moment of ‘Captain Hindsight’ but I and pretty much every AFL fan from Sydney I know saw this coming. The fact is, the AFL never should have expanded and created the GWS Giants in the first place, or at least not for several more years. Whilst Western Sydney is a heavily populated area and is filled with sports fans, there was no evidence that the people in that region wanted their own AFL team. The truly hardcore AFL fans were already Swans fans or fans of Victorian teams and there weren’t many casual fans just waiting to get a team based closer to their home, like there was with the A-League.

Be that as it may, there is a very specific reason the AFL expanded into Western Sydney as early as it did and it isn’t about losing ground to NRL and the Western Sydney Wanderers. The AFL expanded into Western Sydney because they were negotiating a new TV deal and being able to say they had a second team in the biggest TV market, specifically in the most densely populated area of that market, was a huge bargaining chip for the AFL to use to increase the value of the deal. Whether the people in that market actually tune in won’t impact this TV deal, but it might impact the next one if they can’t right the ship.

The idea of having a team in Western Sydney is so much more appealing than the reality of it. But once they made that decision to expand into the market, they needed to execute it correctly to make it at least have a chance.

Unfortunately they seemed to have missed the mark in that way too. In terms of players, whilst their young draft picks are coming along nicely, their recruiting of marquee names was poor. Tom Scully, whilst a young talent, is not nearly the name nor the player that Gary Ablett is or was. Paying Scully to be the face of the organisation from Day One only made sense if he was going to be at All-Australian level from the beginning; otherwise he was just an overpaid and slightly more advanced version of all the kids they were drafting to play with him. If they believed Scully was a star already, they were badly mistaken and if they believed it was wiser to spend the money on a player still developing, it is yet to be proven and seems headed in the wrong direction.

Then they also signed an NRL convert to attract the NRL fans, much like the Gold Coast already did. However the difference is that Folau was never a beloved figure in Western Sydney even though he was born there, plus unlike Karmichael Hunt, he had never played a junior game of AFL. Not to mention the fact that learning a key position is significantly harder than Hunt learning to just attack the ball and his opponent around the ground. The Folau experiment was doomed to fail and whilst he earned good money, he wasted a couple of years of his career that he could have used to dominate the NRL or Super Rugby, as he has done since he switched to play for the Waratahs this year.

Off the field, their promotions failed just as badly. Unlike the Western Sydney Wanderers, the Giants did an awful job endearing themselves to the local community of Western Sydney. I don’t live in that area but I’ve spoken to several sports fans that do and none had any knowledge or relationship with the Giants beyond the standard advertising we saw around the city. If anything, the Giants publically seemed to completely misunderstand the culture of the various people in the area and Kevin Sheedy as coach and figurehead did a truly awful job by being arrogant, dismissing the NRL culture of the area and of course the ethnic background of many in the area. The Giants needed to tap into the community at a grass roots level and if anything they went the other way and alienated many people that could have been won over eventually.

The other problem with the Giants from an AFL standpoint is that the manner in which they did the expansion ended up retarding the ability for struggling, existing clubs like the Melbourne Demons to rebuild. The AFL draft is the main way clubs can rebuild and the Demons have been left in purgatory waiting for the chance to get the draft picks their lack of success has earned them. Sure they made bad decisions along the way, but in the two years they had the number one pick, they selected one bust and one prospect that ditched them for the GWS anyway. If the AFL ever expands again, I think they need to reconsider the way the expansion team builds their squad.

All is not yet lost for the Giants. If they can land a legitimate star like Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin as rumoured to go along with the development of their young players, their on field performances will clearly improve and give the franchise some star power to try to reach the market again. But they need to throw out everything they have done to this point, all but apologise to the people of the area and start from scratch, building relationships within the communities they are trying to reach.

The on field success will come within the next few years and by default that will increase their fan base, but will it be increasing from abysmal to mediocre, or will it be increasing from mediocre to decent? That will come down to how they go about fixing what is clearly a broken model right now.

But if they can get it right, well then they might be Giants.

Everyday Racism: Eddie, Goodesy and a 13 Year Old Girl

Adam Goodes points out the fan who called him an 'ape'

Racism is both awful and unfortunately all too common. There are some people in society who think it isn’t particularly common anymore and that it is a relic of the past, but those tend to be the people who aren’t on the receiving end.

This past week’s incident where a 13 year old female Collingwood fan called Sydney Swans’ Indigenous star Adam Goodes  an ‘ape’ (during Indigenous Round no less) was an unfortunate reminder of this. The fact Collingwood president and media personality Eddie McGuire went and made it worse on radio only makes it harder for Collingwood’s message to reach their fans to improve their conduct.

To be clear, the blame in this unfortunate incident does not lie with a 13 year old. I think overall the media has done a pretty good job of not making her the villain in all of this, although if you do internet or twitter searches on it, some folks are.

It is entirely possible that the girl used the word ‘ape’ without even understanding the racial undertones of it. If she had called him another name that didn’t have a history as a racist word, none of this would be an issue as name calling from the stands is standard sporting protocol. But even if she didn’t know what the word actually meant, she clearly had picked it up from somewhere. You don’t just happen to choose such a specific name to call someone at that age if you haven’t heard it used elsewhere. So whether or not she meant it in a racist way, I think it is a fair assumption that the original user of the word that she heard it from did use it in that context.

Collingwood famously has a history with racist abuse coming from the stands. 20 years ago St Kilda star Nicky Winmar was a victim of such abuse and in a wonderful act of defiance and pride he lifted his shirt and pointed to his skin colour on his body. Since those dark days, Collingwood has tried very hard to distance itself from racial abuse, as well as taking a hard stand against any fan caught doing so. They are at the forefront of the discussion of eradicating racism from football and society in general.

Unfortunately, either their fans seem to have a higher propensity to resort to this behaviour, or perhaps they are just the ones getting caught doing so. I’m sure it happens at other games and I myself have heard racist terms used by fans at numerous sporting events.

People like to make jokes about the intelligence of Collingwood fans, but that’s mostly because they are the team we all love to hate. However, incidents like this one do nothing to squash that stereotype.

The girl in question from this incident however is a product of the society she came from. That starts at home with her parents and includes her extended family, her school and her neighbourhood. Whilst it is possible she didn’t know what she was saying, the fact of the matter is, she SHOULD have known what she was saying because education on such matters should be taught to kids from a young age.

This is not a subject to wait until a child is in the last few years of high school to discuss. Kids need to grow up with it imprinted into their brain that people are all created equal and they need to understand that certain words mean certain things. I’m not saying they need to learn the specifics of some of the awful things that have been done in the past by racists at such a tender age, but they should certainly be learning about equality as well as what is offensive.

Most importantly, this education shouldn’t have to be coming from a bloody football team. It is admirable and important for sporting bodies to take a stand on these issues and influence the conversation in society. However, it is not the job of sporting bodies to actually be the ones teaching people not to be assholes. It starts at home and at school and the fact I even feel the need to write that makes me sad.

To make matters worse, after the way Collingwood did a good job directly after the incident, Eddie McGuire then went and undid a lot of that good work on his radio show by suggesting Adam Goodes come to the opening of the King Kong musical in Melbourne (it was actually hard to even follow what he was suggesting). I don’t believe Eddie McGuire is a racist person. He has done plenty of good work in that field, so I’m not saying he is racist. However, the thinking process it takes to get from King Kong musical to Adam Goodes has an inherent racism to it.

It may have been “the opposite of what he was trying to say” as he claimed, but even still, somehow his brain went from King Kong to Adam Goodes and making a joke about it. Even if he was claiming that back in the day when racism was more tolerated they would use situations like this to capitalise, it’s still a thought predicated on race.

Whilst it was good that he called a press conference and apologised and admitted his mistake, he got a bit defensive when he was asked questions. Only once the fallout to that wasn’t ideal did he become more contrite and now might offer his resignation pending the AFL investigation into the matter.

The main problem with Eddie’s gaffe is that Collingwood are trying to educate fans and discipline those who don’t comply, but their credibility on the matter is now compromised because even their boss has fallen into it. You will now see uneducated fans thinking that if Eddie can do it, they can too, even if he did apologise.

This is why it shouldn’t even be falling on Collingwood to educate their fans at all. Yes they should throw out the bad ones, but the issue of education should be done well before someone enters a football stadium.

Some think this entire story has been blown out of proportion and that everyone is getting too touchy, but those people miss the big picture. This isn’t about individual incidents of racism in a public forum. This is about the society in which we live and the fact that this is still happening every day.

As a member of a minority that has been the subject of so much horror for such a long time, I always have my ears pricked up when I hear things that are racist. I am fortunate to only have experienced direct racism a couple of times in my life, however because I am white, the fact I am part of a minority is not so externally obviously. That fact has probably enabled me to avoid being a target more often.

Racism at the footy is not the story and nor should it be. A 13 year old girl making a racist comment isn’t the story either. What people need to focus on is trying to be part of a society where we eradicate this thinking entirely, much like we did with polio and smallpox. But remember, the only vaccination for racism is education.

Measuring the Intangibles: Brains Over Brawn

When it comes to measuring an athlete’s skills there are a lot of things we use to evaluate them. Things like size, strength, speed, endurance, ball skills and more depending on the sport itself. There is also something we hear about called ‘intangibles’, which is something some athletes have and some don’t. ‘Intangibles’ includes several things like personality, leadership, brains, decision making, attitude, heart, effort and all those attributes that can be harder to quantify and thus they are not tangible.

To create a successful sporting team you don’t need every single player to have those intangible qualities, but you definitely need a core of them. Culture is so important in sporting teams and the ones that create success for sustainable periods are those with an inbuilt culture of success.

Now obviously we can’t measure every aspect of the intangibles but we certainly can try measure elements of it. If I were running a sports team and able to choose the players we sign (and hopefully one day I will be), I would implement a system to make sure I was bringing in players not only of high character, but also of high intelligence, decision making in limited time and logic/reasoning ability.

Quite simply, I would make all players take an aptitude test. Some players would probably hate it and to be honest it might rule out certain players who shouldn’t be ruled out. But overall, I think I’d be doing pretty well on average if I was signing primarily players who scored highly on an aptitude test.

In the salary cap world, the actual talent of the players across most teams is relatively even. Yes there are outliers at the top and the bottom, but by and large most teams have a few stars surrounded by a bunch of role players with enough talent to be playing in the league. What separates the good teams from the bad are things like decision making in important moments, playing and sticking to the team plan and structures as well as some luck with injuries and the bounce of the ball.

The Melbourne Storm aren’t just built around three of the most talented players in the league, they are built around three of the smartest. The same can be said for the San Antonio Spurs, a team that has been in the title picture without fail since 1998. The Storm and the Spurs have a lot of similarities. They both are built around a coach and system that ties in perfectly with their star players and then smartly surrounded by underappreciated role players. These role players are crucial because they need to completely understand not only their role, but everyone on the team’s role. If one guy gets hurt, they are easily replaced because everyone buys into the system and understands it.

It sounds simple and easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it successfully.

Up until they reach the professional level, a lot of athletes have relied purely on their natural talent levels. But at the professional level everyone else has that talent level too.  This is why we see guys with immense talent become ‘busts’ and never reach their potential at the pro level.

For this reason, if I was comparing an athlete with A level talent but a C level brain to an athlete with B level talent but an A level brain, I’d likely take the B level talent. I want to know I can maximise the talent of the player and get the consistency that comes with someone who will fit in to what the coach is trying to accomplish.

To evaluate this, I would likely look to implement the Wonderlic Test used for players entering the NFL Draft. The Wonderlic is a multiple choice test of 50 questions to be answered in 12 minutes or less. A score of 20 indicates average intelligence and 10 points is required to at least be considered literate.

It is considered important in the NFL primarily for positions with the most decision making, namely quarterback and the offensive linemen who protect him. It may surprise you, but those monsters protecting the quarterback are usually the smartest guys on the field and average the highest scores in the Wonderlic. This is because to be good as an offensive lineman, you need to process a lot of information very quickly and make the right decision, or else your pretty boy star quarterback will end up getting smashed. It is a high pressure job and requires brains, not just brawn. For reference, the average score for a quarterback is 24 and an offensive lineman is 26.

In rugby league for example, obviously the positions that would need to score the highest would be the ‘spine’ of the fullback, five-eighth, halfback and hooker. They are the playmakers and decision makers pulling the strings and implementing the coach’s system.

Without naming names, there are many players I have never rated or felt like were overrated because I felt like they didn’t have these qualities to lead their team. They had natural ability, but that doesn’t get you as far at the elite level. These are the players that lead fans to look at each other in shock when the player makes the worst decision at the worst time as opposed to someone maybe less talented, but does the smart thing and keeps his head and composure.

Cameron Smith looks like he should be doing your taxes and yet he is one of the greatest footy players of all time because he is like a coach on the field. Darren Lockyer was the same way and believe it or not larrikins like Andrew Johns and Brad Fittler were genius decision makers, not just talents, when it came to football. I bet they would score higher on the Wonderlic than some would imagine.

Look at a guy like Jeff Robson at the Cronulla Sharks. He would barely have enough natural talent to be in the NRL and yet he has become the glue of that team and Todd Carney absolutely needs Robson next to him to harness his own abilities. Fans of other teams and even some Sharks fans may wonder why they stick with Robson, but I’m sure Shane Flanagan trusts no one more than their number 7.

Obviously teams need some X-Factor type players and you don’t need an entire team of brain surgeons to win. But you need brains where it matters and you certainly do not want the lunatics running the asylum.

I think it would be fascinating if the AFL implemented the Wonderlic prior to the draft the same way the NFL does. I wonder how much it would accurately predict success at AFL level and whether teams would value it as highly as I do.

Also teams struggling and in need of a rebuild, like the Wests Tigers or Melbourne Demons, could implement the test to their own players and potential recruits, looking to use a different edge to get back to challenging for the NRL premiership. They already evaluate other factors; the brain should be in there too.

Getting a bunch of big, strong, fast guys will get you so far, but you need to make sure you have enough smart guys pointing them in the right direction. If the big, strong, fast guys also double as the smart guys, then that’s even better and how you end up with LeBron James or Greg Inglis.

Sometimes the best ideas are to steal other people’s ideas and implement them where they aren’t being used. The NFL has a good idea and it’s time we look to steal it.

On the Road to the Holy Grail

Gary Ablett gets a clearance against St Kilda

The return of footy season is now complete with the AFL having gotten through a full round after two weekends. There were a few big upsets and much like in the NRL, whilst we don’t want to read too much into one game, there are still certainly some takeaways and observations to make after a very interesting round of matches.

Starting with the matches that took place over a week ago now, Essendon surprised many by putting all their off season controversy behind them and beating a very good Crows team in Adelaide. Whilst they may have lost a star in Kurt Tippett, there was and is no reason to think that Adelaide will not continue to be a force in 2013, especially with the continued development of players like Dangerfield, Sloane and Talia.

I expect the Crows to turn it around going forward, but it will be interesting to see if Essendon are actually for real or if they simply had one super performance in them as they were galvanised by the emotion of all the scrutiny they are under.

Even further west, the season saw the first Derby of 2013 with Fremantle looking the good against the Eagles. Both teams should be solid in 2013, but watch for Freo to really take a step up into the elite of the competition. They have a legitimate home field advantage, a coach who brings a very strong culture and a list of real talent, even if people don’t pay enough attention to them. This could be one of those years where the top 8 is dominated by non-Victorian teams.

On Thursday night we saw Richmond finally win a close game and get one over Carlton in their traditional Round 1 match. All three matches to this point had seen a team kick at least three early goals only to go on to lose. I think both Carlton and Richmond will be in a similar position this season, both fighting to make the 8 and at the end of the season and that could be a very handy four points for the Tigers. 2013 might finally be the year they actually get to play in September, however I think that’s about the best they can hope for this year. But I rate Hardwick as a coach and they are headed in the right direction.

Carlton is a hard one to judge. They have the mighty Mick Malthouse at the helm now and with a great coach, a champion in Chris Judd and other stars, they should be a very good team. But there is just something lacking there. They drift in and out of games and they must be very frustrating to support. Malthouse being Malthouse will get them on the right path, but fans will be expecting that to happen sooner rather than later.

On Saturday we saw the Bulldogs annihilate the Lions in a game many thought would be Brisbane’s coming out party. If you ever needed yet another reminder of how irrelevant the NAB Cup is, look at the Lions performance in this game. Preseason form could not mean less in AFL and the Swans have known that for years.

This is the year the Lions need to show they are moving towards a spot in the 8 or else Michael Voss might be looking for a new job. They have some absolute gun young players, although they also don’t have a huge amount of depth across the squad, so they still have a long way to go. I love me some Jack Redden though.

On the other side of the field, what a great performance by the Bulldogs. Many predict they will be real strugglers in 2013 but they didn’t get the message, at least for one game. Brett Goodes debuted at age 28 and put on a show his brother would be proud of. I am also proud of him as I smartly played in in my fantasy team on debut. Keep it up Goodesy!

The Swans as expected beat the Giants in the Sydney derby. The Swans were completely underdone and were not impressive in victory, but I expected as much. They are clearly taking a slow build into the season and looking to find form at the right time, much like Hawthorn did last season after a slow start. If the Swans can have a decent record when Tippett comes into the side half way through the season, then watch out for the champs on the road to September.

The Giants continue to show development and whilst they likely won’t win many games this season, they will make teams work hard to beat them. Patton and Cameron will be a dynamic forward duo and their midfield kids like Toby Greene are studs in the making.

The Gold Coast Suns are one year more advanced than the Giants and they had a big win over St Kilda. I don’t know why but I actually saw this one coming. I think St Kilda is going to struggle this season and it is time Gold Coast were actually competitive. It is year three for them in the AFL and they have no excuses for not being at least decent. Plus they have Gary Ablett and it really isn’t close for who the best player in the AFL is. He’s basically LeBron or Messi at this point.

Collingwood won running away from the Kangas on Sunday and I think that went about as expected. North showed heart but the Pies are just too good. No news there.

Port Adelaide put a beat down on the Demons as well in a game that showed a lot about the direction of both clubs. Port look like they will be competitive at least under new coach Ken Hinkley, whilst Melbourne is an abomination. The only bright light for the Dees’ fans was the performance of their debutants Jack Viney and Mark Jones. Viney in particular looks to be an absolute gun, but it is pretty damning when your best player is an 18 year old kid playing his first game. Half that team should be dropped.

Finally we have the big game between Hawthorn and Geelong. The Hawks started favourites but some things are bigger than that and the Kennett Curse is one of those things. When Geelong started to come back in that game I genuinely think it got into the heads of the Hawks players and they folded like a cheap suit. I expect the Hawks will still be a better team than Geelong this season, but head to head I am tipping the Cats until the Hawks prove me wrong.

It’s so great to have the AFL back in full swing and between the AFL, NRL, Super Rugby, A-League, Premier League and the American sports (March Madness in particular) that was one hell of a sports long weekend. My Dad and I barely moved for four days and I regret nothing.