Leadership a key to success
08 June 2007 Herald-Sun
Trevor Grant
FROM as far back as when captains made the call on free kicks because umpires were still to be invented, football has always placed a high premium on the value of leadership.
It is no coincidence that clubs which have occupied the top end of the ladder in recent years, such as Sydney, Adelaide and West Coast, abound with leadership strength while the current doormats, such as Carlton, Richmond, and Melbourne, struggle to raise a quorum of genuine candidates for a leadership meeting.
Richmond thought so little of its nominated leader, Bruce Monteath, that he was named as an interchange player in the 1980 Grand Final team. He spent much of the game watching from the bench as his teammates won the flag.
The quest to find and develop young men who can lead is so intense that it has spawned a new industry. Professional motivators and leadership consultants are now as much a part of the furniture at clubs as the property steward. It's no longer enough to have one leader; clubs have co-captains, rotating captains and leadership groups of up to 10 players. Some have formal sub-groups under the main one.
Melbourne and Richmond both lost their first nine games this season, bringing sharply into focus the dearth of natural leaders.
Tigers' football director Greg Miller has identified a leadership black hole, saying current captain Kane Johnson, who got the job in 2005 after only two seasons at the club, carries a heavy load.
"I don't think it's so much an issue with leadership quality, more with depth," he said recently, nominating three imports - Troy Simmonds, Nathan Brown and Johnson - as the club's best leaders.
Richmond used a leadership consultancy group to help choose its captain.
"We put a lot of time into getting the right captain," coach Terry Wallace said. "There were tests like 30 flash cards each with a different aspect of leadership on them. The players had to prioritise them in the order they felt reflected the most important aspects of leadership.
"People said it was a lot of crap. But it gave us a good guide as we started to work out our priorities as a club. We weren't after a future leader at the time. We needed a doer straight away and Kane was the standout once we went through the process."
Hawthorn and Geelong have looked beyond the boundary as much as inside it in their captaincy choices, with Richie Vandenberg and Tom Harley some distance from being among their club's most talented players.
"I don't see any problem with that. It's what they bring in so many other areas that's important," said Adelaide premiership captain Mark Bickley. "It might be their voice, or the way they demand excellence from their players on the field.
"They don't have to get 25 touches every week to be valuable players. In lots of ways that's what I brought to the table."
Hird ... has always been one of his team's great players. But he agrees that leading by example means much more than getting three votes each week.
"I think as a captain your principles and morals and what you stand for off the ground are as important as what you do on the ground," he said.
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