Jack Higgins quit school after driving teachers nuts, but he’s a very smart footballerSAM LANDSBERGER,
Herald Sun
27 July 2018SEATED at the front of Richmond team meetings this year, Jack Higgins’s mind was starting to stray.
It shouldn’t surprise. Higgins gave Caulfield Grammar the boot after Year 11, classrooms struggling to contain his boundless energy.
One day Higgins crept out of class, printed off about 10 pictures of Caulfield Grammar alumni Chris Judd and stuck them around the school.
But at the Tigers he needed to concentrate. Perhaps the lyrics to the club’s theme song — risking head and shin — played a role in his approach.
“Sometimes my mind does just wander off,” Higgins told the Herald Sun this week.
“So I’ve got to refocus. I sort of just kick my shin. So I sit at the front and I kick my shin if I feel my mind wandering.”
It is a tactic Higgins’ school teachers could’ve done with.
“I wish I’d known that seven years ago — I would’ve given him a kick myself!” Cadell Duke, who taught Higgins in Grade 6 at Malvern Primary School, laughed this week.
“Keeping him in the classroom for more than four seconds after the bell had gone to start recess was a struggle, and getting him back in the classroom was a challenge as well.
“His mind would wander, but he was never destructive. As he jokes about, he’s not the most studious kid in the world — but he was by no means a ratbag.
“The classroom environment is not for everyone, and you have to try your best to make it work for everybody.”
Higgins has grinned that a string of “Fs” in Year 11 helped him make the easy decision to quit school.
“I couldn’t really sit straight and was bored,” he said.
“If I did (Year 12) I’d probably get a bad score, so what’s the point in me going through?”
But when the Tigers drafted the firecracker forward at pick No.17 last year, it was partly because of his football brain.
“He’s got a really strong footy IQ,” Richmond recruiter Matthew Clarke said.
“Jack really knows where the ball’s going. He knows when to get forward, he knows when to get out the back, and to be lateral as well. He’s a very smart player.”
It’s a consistent theme. In Grade 6, Duke said Higgins was “maybe not the sharpest” when it came to punctuation, spelling and grammar. But step outdoors and he would ace any physical test.
“He was an excellent runner, and a real tactician in a race,” Duke said.
“So in a 1500m he knew not to go out and burn. Everything with sport he was incredibly intelligent. And he was always incredibly fit — you’d already see the tone in his arms as a 12-year-old.”
Especially after games, when I’m so hyped up, I don’t even know what the next word I’m saying is, sometimes.
That was Higgins the 12-year-old. Higgins the 13-year-old was completing speed and endurance training with fitness guru Bohdan Babijczuk.
Higgins the teenager then enlisted the help of Oakleigh Under-16 coach Anthony Phillips (father of Collingwood’s Tom) and strength trainer Valeri Stoimenov, who has coached China’s Olympic swimming team.
That posse of professionals helps explain why Higgins said after his second game that he was born to play AFL.
“It’s been a dream ever since I came out of the womb,” he said.
This 177cm dynamo busted his gut to get to Tigerland. Champion Data ranked him No.1 in last year’s draft because he averaged a record 145 SuperCoach points across 33 junior matches.
About 4am on draft day, Higgins woke up to go for one more kick of the footy in Caulfield.
“I’ve watched the vision back a few times of me getting drafted, and you dream about that stuff,” he said.
“I was over the moon. I was so happy for the next two weeks. When I got to the club I’m like, ‘How good is this?’.”
With a teenage support network like that, Higgins always seemed destined to make the grade.
In fact, Higgins had his AFL retirement plans mapped out before he was even recruited.
“I’d love to become an umpire,” he said at last year’s draft camp.
“I reckon it’d be sick behind the whistle. I’d really enjoy it and it gives you another perspective on the game.”
There is a fascination with Higgins and it is easy to see why. He is the boy who speaks as quickly as Usain Bolt runs while smiling as wide as Brad Johnson.
He is the kid who cannot help but incessantly cackle in conversation. The loveable larrikin who had Brownlow winner Dustin Martin in stitches with that bizarre Round 15 halftime address, in just his 10th game.
Higgins said captain Trent Cotchin asked him that night: “Higgo, mate, got any words for us?”
“Everyone just looked at me, and I’m like ‘s---’. So I just said something like really quickly off the top of my head.
“The thing was, it wasn’t even that funny — it was probably that I said it, and I said it so quickly.”
About 200 mates sent Higgins that clip — and he is sick of it.
“I hate the sound of my own voice, so I hate people showing me,” he said.
“I’m like, ‘Mate, I don’t want to see it’ or if people ask me about it and I’m like, ‘I don’t care’.”
But he “enjoys the media stuff”. Remember when Higgins stole the show in a TV interview after his spirited debut?
“To get the win and kick two snags — it was unreal,” he said on the MCG.
Asked a follow-up question about an overzealous goal celebration, Higgins replied at top speed: “It was heat of the moment — I looked like a bit of a tosser”.
Now when Higgins walks down the street he has random people walking up to say the word “snags” to him.
The next week, coach Damien Hardwick copped an abusive message from his son, BJ, for dropping Higgins.
By the time Jonathan Brown finished interviewing Higgins post-game on Fox Footy, the Brisbane Lions champion had one piece of advice for the raw youngster — don’t ever change.
Good news, Browny.
“I’m not going to be someone else because someone else wants me to be,” Higgins said.
“I’m a bit different to the average AFL player, who’s … not clichéd, but I just say the stuff that’s on top of my head.
“Especially after games, when I’m so hyped up. I don’t even know what the next word I’m saying is, sometimes.
“I don’t even think what I say. It sounds pretty stupid, but anyway. We’ve done a bit of media training. But they always say to me to just be yourself.”
In other words, he won’t be straying from his true self.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/jack-higgins-quit-school-after-driving-teachers-nuts-but-hes-a-very-smart-footballer/news-story/fd9cef0469fa70299a958b3a97b06c5c
