The start of 2012 saw Melbourne Football Club appoint two extremely young co-captains in Jack Trengove and Jack Grimes. It’s time to admit that the gamble has failed.
Not that the players haven’t tried. But at 20 years of age, Trengove became the youngest captain in VFL/AFL history. Grimes was not much older at 22.
The debate when they were appointed was whether such inexperienced players would be able to make the hard calls and challenge their teammates, as well as guide them in what new coach Mark Neeld was trying to implement on the field.
No doubt the hardest aspect as a leader is looking your teammate in the eye and telling him when he needs to improve in certain areas, to lift his game or to adhere to the team ethos.
This becomes even harder when the team is going poorly.
A leader also needs support across the club to help particular players turn things around.
As a leader you use what tricks you can to help team cohesion, but when your team battles over a prolonged period, it becomes even harder to keep your teammates up and try to get something out of the year.
Starting out last year, the co-captains lost the first nine games. Their side was accused of a lack of intensity, effort, and work rate, not things that any leader of men wants to hear.
Nonetheless, the two Jacks ended up getting through the year well enough, and showed improvement on a personal level along the way, handling themselves especially well when fronting the media.
It was a quiet but busy summer for the pair as they went about setting the example for their group and trying to prepare them for a fast start in 2013.
Unfortunately, only two games in, here we are in the same position again, asking the same questions of Melbourne Football Club’s approach.
Leading up to Round 2, the football world was looking for a positive response after an extremely poor first-up effort against Port Adelaide.
Instead that response came by way of a massive defeat at the hands of the Bombers.
The question must again be asked whether Trengove and Grimes are the right players to take the club forward.
They could be great leaders in the future, but right now I feel for them, trying to manage a club in such difficulty before either is even an established player in the competition.
The pressure on them will now be enormous. These two should be able to focus solely on their roles in the side and the development of their own games, without the worry of what to do next to inspire the team to victory.
Instead they are being asked to carry an entire club’s burden.
Leadership in a consistently losing side is one of the hardest jobs in football. Every club has had seasons stringing together loss after loss, some far more than others. It’s a real test of a leader’s ability.
Firstly it is about your relationship with the coach. It is easy for players and coaches to go into self preservation mode and worry about themselves. Collective leadership needs to reinforce the belief that you will turn the corner.
Tom Harley is one who comes to mind, in lifting the Cats from a struggling side to a multiple premiership team. This was based on accepting nothing but the best in terms of effort. If you didn’t measure up, you were challenged, then supported to improve and avoid those mistakes.
Scott Wynd and Chris Grant were two excellent captains I played under who led our group through tough times and out the other end. The standards they set made you want to improve and not let your skipper down.
It can change quickly. In 1996 the Bulldogs finished second last and lost our coach Alan Joyce. Like Melbourne this year, things had not been looking good since our first two rounds, when we lost by 87 points in Brisbane, then 131 against the Kangaroos.
In came a new board, with a new coach in Terry Wallace, and by 1997 we started improving rapidly and made the preliminary final. This came down to a new self belief, a new game plan, and improved skill development.
We did not play finals from 2001 to 2005 but during this time we always believed we were on the right path. There was excitement based around the younger players in the team, and we knew it would turn.
Eventually it did, and from 2006 we made finals four of the next five years.
I wonder if Melbourne’s players have that belief in their own teammates. It would be tough to maintain after recent results, but only they can really answer that question.
Regardless of the answer, it’s too big an ask of youngsters like Trengove and Grimes to be responsible for cultivating that belief.
Give them the latitude of being junior players, as by rights they should be. These are tomorrow’s leaders, and by the time they’re ready to step up, they’ll be better for it.
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