An excerpt from former Geelong defender and three-time premiership player Matthew Scarlett’s autobiography spread like wildfire through the sporting world last year, echoing the sentiments of thousands.
“At three-quarter time, my already dark mood worsened. Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell wandered close to our huddle and started mouthing off. It wasn’t the sledging that bothered me, it was the fact he was the one delivering it. None of our players had any respect for Maxwell. We hated how he was being compared to Tom Harley. It was simply wrong.”
This week, Scott Pendlebury was named as the new captain of the Collingwood Football Club, ending Nick Maxwell’s five-year reign.
Many people are saying ‘about time’.
But why? Why was Maxwell’s captaincy so widely criticised?
Was it because he isn’t the match-winning midfielder that Gary Ablett Jr is? Is it because people thought that there was a better option who could take on the job?
What we do know, or at least what I know, is that the choice to replace the retired Scott Burns with Nick Maxwell was the right one, given the circumstances.
Leaders, including Nathan Buckley, James Clement and Paul Licuria had recently retired and there was no obvious, outstanding replacement available to lead the club.
With Eddie McGuire gunning for a premiership, the captaincy could have been handed to Tarkyn Lockyear or Shane O’Bree for a year or two, but this was only a short-term solution – one that had been tried the year before with the aforementioned Burns.
It had to be someone younger. In the end, Nick Maxwell was chosen.
Selected at No.15 in the 2002 draft, Maxwell had become a solid performer for Collingwood. But he was no superstar, and many criticised the appointment.
Still, Maxwell was effective. In 2009, his first season as captain, Collingwood finished fourth on the ladder before losing to Geelong, who went on to win the premiership, by 73 points in the preliminary final.
Maxwell earned All-Australian honours that year, capping off a good season for both him and the club.
The 2010 season was the club’s best in 20 years. Led by Maxwell and an increasingly formidable midfield, Collingwood and its forward press became almost impossible to beat, going on to win the grand final replay by 56 points.
At the end of the game Maxwell held the premiership cup aloft, and at that moment the entire sporting world could not say a word against him. How can you slander a man who’d done what even Nathan Buckley couldn’t?
Until the last hurdle, Collingwood enjoyed an almost blemish-free season in 2011.
They were beaten only by Geelong during the regular season and were widely regarded as the best team in the competition by quite a margin. But, alas, they failed in the premiership decider.
In 2012 and 2013, Maxwell’s captaincy continued, criticised by the public but never by the club.
But this year, after three grand finals and a flag in five seasons in charge, Maxwell and the club have decided that it’s time to pass on the baton to the now mature and ready Scott Pendlebury.
Pendlebury is a marquee player – a player that you could build an entire list around.
Kids wear his number on their backs. They want to be him. They want to make time slow down, as Pendlebury seems to have the ability to do.
The same cannot be said about Maxwell.
No one tries to emulate the lanky defender. He doesn’t win the ball out of the centre and drill it to Travis Cloke. He doesn’t get the glory. But that doesn’t mean that he should be respected any less.
In you were to compare him to another player, it would be, to Matthew Scarlett’s distaste, Tom Harley.
Self-sacrificing tall defenders who wouldn’t be in the top 10 players at their respective clubs, both Harley and Maxwell demanded respect from their players – and in the end, that’s what matters the most.
If this season is to be Nick Maxwell’s last, as he has hinted that it might be, then I encourage all who love football to show him some respect when the end finally comes.
He’s earned it.
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