It’s brought many a great sporting team to its knees; now the small but unmistakable signs of hubris are hovering above Geelong like a storm cloud.
The first indications bubbled to the surface in the middle of the season when we discovered Steve Johnson and Cam Mooney were engaged in a personal battle to see who could provide the most ‘goal assists’ to their teammates.
Which is a lovely, selfless, team-oriented idea, but it led to the ridiculous situation of both players, with open goals at their mercy, looking to dish off the ball to teammates in demonstrably worse positions. Just so they could rack up one more notch in their ‘goal assists’ column.
To outsiders, it looked a little like they were taking the piss. That they were treating their opponents with contempt.
In fact, Johnson’s ‘wayward genius’ thing is now wearing a bit thin. Not content with just kicking the open goal from 30 metres, Johnson insists on doing a cartwheel, balancing the ball on his nose, lighting a cigarette then attempting a banana goal from the boundary line. In other teams, he’d be called a mug lair.
Andrew Mackie, playing off half-back, is falling into similar bad habits, attempting the audacious when the low-risk percentage play would do just fine. Perhaps he, Johnson and Mooney, realize their teammates are so good, they’ll bail them out of any trouble.
A fortnight ago, Matthew Scarlett was involved in the unedifying spectacle of an after-match argument with St Kilda’s Robert Harvey. Harvey, apparently, is no angel in these matters and far more vocal on the field than his unflappable manner would suggest. But for Scarlett to be engaged in that sort of carry-on with the 380-gamer after another huge Geelong win was just not a good look. It smacked of arrogance. After you’ve won, the time is to shake hands, acknowledge your opponent and move on, no matter what is said.
Then, we have the not altogether reliable word of Jason Akermanis about an incident in the Bulldogs-Geelong game in round 16, at Skilled Stadium, when Scarlett allegedly taunted the Bulldogs players late in the match by saying the Cats were headed for back-to-back premierships.
I know, there’ll be a clamour from aggrieved Cats’ fans, still walking tall after the club’s first premiership win in 44 years. How churlish, they’ll say, how mean-spirited. Another tall poppy slashed to the ground. We’re not arrogant, they’ll scream, we’re just too good.
It’s true, their team is very good, one of the best we’ve seen in the AFL for many years. Forty-one wins from 43 games is testament to that. But the challenge now is to behave like a great team: to win with humility and grace, while treating the opposition with some respect.
Tempting fate, humiliating defeated foes and displeasing the gods, comes at a price, as the ancient Greeks knew only too well. They even invented a word for it: hubris.
7 Comments
Haven’t all great teams had a degree of arrogance?
West Coast had it (both the early 90s and especially the mid 2000s teams), Brisbane had it, North Melbourne had it in spades, Carlton always has it and the great Hawthorn teams of the 80s probably set the benchmark.
The current Hawthorn teams doesn’t lack in this department either.
But I think this is almost a required trait in sport — to think your better than your oppenent.
I don’t know — what do you think Charlie?
You make a fair point, Lethal. But arrogance is a fairly broad concept. Yes, Brereton and Carey used to strut about like bantam roosters, and there was a time when Carlton was a byword for arrogance – before, thankfully, they were brought to heel – but I don’t recall those teams taking the piss out of their opposition, or rubbing their nose in it when 10 goals ahead.
Rubbing their nose in it when 10 goals ahead? Taking the piss out of the opposition? Where are the examples of this Charlie?
Take a listen to the captain of the team, Tom Harley. He is the most humble player and captain going around.
Listen to the way the boys who were named All Australian on Monday night spoke. It was all about how they wouldn’t be there without their team mates and a team effort. There humility bordered on the ridiculous.
If a goal assist competition and a slanging match between two players after the siren is the “worst” example of arrogance you have, then this team has nothing on West Coast of two years ago, Carlton of the mid nineties and Hawthorn of the eighties.
Arrogance is unnecessary showboating and after goal celebrations. Arrogance is showing the ball to the opposition or to the crowd before kicking a goal. Arrogance is not showing up to play because you think you’ve got the game won before it has started. You can’t reasonably accuse Geelong of any of this.
I think it’s got to a point where this team is so dominant that people are expecting arrogance and grasping at straws to find it.
Arrogance is also trying on the Harlem Globetrotters routine when a straightforward, no-frills play would do. Or am I the only one to have seen Johnson’s ridiculous extravagances? I agree that Harley, Ablett, Selwood, Bartel and Corey, among others, set a fine example of sportsmanship. No quibbles there. It’s Scarlett, Mooney, Johnson, Mackie and Milburn that I’m worried about.
Johnson’s “extravagances” aren’t arrogance though. He’s a unique player that tries unconventional things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. He has earned All Australian honours two years running for his efforts though.
The only evidence of arrogance from Scarlett comes from the mouth on legs himself – Akermanis. Scarlett’s run-in with Harvey had everything to do with standing up for a teammate and nothing to do with arrogance.
Your characterisation of Mooney, Mackie and Milburn can only lead me to ask: exactly how many Geelong games have you watched recently?
Again, I must say that the examples you are coming up with are wafer thin. If it is the worst of the arrogance that exists they have nothing to worry about.
Charlie,
Okay, the assists are overdone. But Stevie J has been testing geometry and Bomber’s patience from when he first walked in the place. You could probably discipline him, make him play a more regimented style, if you banged his head against a whiteboard long enough. (Say until he’s thirty) But what are you going to have then? Paul Chapman. Or the footballer formerly known as Jarred Rooke. We already have one of each.
Mooney named his son Jagger. I suppose that’s lairising as well. Arrogant to choose a Stone. Maybe he should have called him Shannon Noll.
And what crimes do you ascribe to Mackie, you wretch? A fresh-faced boy like that? My daughters’ speak of him in their sleep, and it makes me think they’re on the right path in life.
See you in October at the reunion. Anson.
anson: you’re no better than mullo. honestly. you’ll be trying to tell me gary ablett snr is misunderstood next. of course naming your son jagger is lairising. what’s wrong with joel or gary or jimmy or something gritty like that? and as for mackie, the boy should have signed up with the fruitfly circus, not gfc, and tried his tricks out under the big top. no, i think your daughters need to be sat down and told the truth: no footballer from south australia with gel in his hair, trying fancy-pants kicks around corners and one-handed speccies, can be trusted. it will be hard, i know, but better to set them straight now, before it’s too late. catch up soon.