Leadership and opportunityJuly 27, 2009 - 1:22PM
ABOUT six weeks ago, Daniel Jackson quietly joined the Richmond leadership group.
The promotion acknowledged that he had good things to teach the club’s young players, and it validated the football he had been playing.
It has given the 23- year-old the chance to develop wider thoughts, share them, become more comfortable in front of the cameras at pre-training media calls, meet plenty of people and set a more "official" example for his younger teammates.
He has also shared some non-football knowledge. A while back, Jackson — who studies commerce, speaks French, reads biographies, loves his role as an AFL Players Association delegate and would like to work overseas at some point — decided he would take up cooking.
As important as football is to him, he needs more. Cooking proved, however, a temporary hobby.
"I took it up for a while, but I’ve since found that there are so many cheap restaurants in and around the city," said Jackson, who lives in Richmond.
"There’s Lygon Street, Victoria Street. I realised I didn’t need to cook, I could eat for less than $10 if I looked hard enough. I like going out for dinner.
I try to go to a new place every week, just to find somewhere new and it’s good, because I’ve got plenty of advice for the younger guys who are new to Melbourne.
They say, ‘Jacko, where should I take this girl?’ and it’s like, ‘Right, so do you want dinner and drinks, or just drinks? Well, this place is good for a snack, or you should go and watch a movie on this rooftop bar’, or whatever. Leadership entails everything, I think."
After five years at Richmond, Jackson entered this season in the final year of his contract and with a bundle of half-seasons behind him, but without much anxiety. In itself, this was a new experience.
The last time the midfielder was waiting on a new offer, he was outside the Richmond side, feeling dissatisfied and stressed, wondering what he would do after football, before football had even been taken away from him.
He was struggling with the thought that he hadn’t proven to himself what he could achieve, let alone shown anyone else, so he sought help.
"I saw a sports psychologist for while, and we’d just sit there and talk," he said. "I was a bit worried, because things felt out of my control. I’d had a bad run with injuries, but I hadn’t really achieved much and I didn’t think I’d proven myself at all. I felt like I had more in me, that was the thing.
"I was getting a bit overwhelmed with what I was going to do if it didn’t work out. I was thinking a lot about what I was going to do outside of football, but this guy really helped.
"We’d just sit there and talk for two hours and he’d guide the conversation, but I found I figured things out myself in the end. People would be surprised.
"Everyone has the impression that AFL footballers live a great lifestyle, get in the media, get a lot of free stuff and get paid really well, but that’s only a small portion of it.
"The rest of the time you’re stressed about whether your body’s going to get up for the game, whether you’ll get a game, why you’re not playing well, what the media think of you, what your friends think of you. You’re constantly under the pump. The guys who don’t go and seek help, I don’t really know how they do it."
Why have things been so different, this time around? It started midway through last year, when various parts of Jackson’s life crumbled — all at once.
He injured a hamstring, the university holidays were upon him and he had recently come out of a long-term relationship.
Basically, he had nothing to do, so rather than sit at home feeling bored and sorry for himself, he went swimming, or to the gym, to do some extra work.
He became fitter than he had been and by the time he was ready to play again, he couldn’t wait for it.
Two of his coaches, Terry Wallace and Craig McRae, had decided to try him as a midfield stopper, and so Jackson had new opponents to research and new skills to learn.
Having started playing football only at the urging of his mates during high school, he had always felt slightly behind, as if he had been piecing his game together, bit by bit.
But in the last six games of last season, he played with a more settled mind, as if he understood why he was there, and what he was meant to be doing.
"It probably all started off-field, and then it wound into on-field," said Jackson, who felt fresh at the end of the season and, after a month travelling in Asia, flew into pre-season training.
"I was probably going to the gym every night, pretty much, just because I was looking to distract myself. I like to read, but when you’ve got things on your mind, it’s hard to even concentrate on that.
I’d played all my PlayStation games and there was nothing on TV, so it was, ‘What can I do to stop going mad?’
"So I went to the gym, and when I could start running I was doing more fi tness sessions. So I was in fairly good nick, and I’d had a good mental break as well. I had a new role to play, so I was researching that, and all of a sudden I was really looking forward to going out there and playing.
"I was always more of an athlete than a footballer, but halfway through last year I finally started to feel that it was coming together. I was working out what worked for me out on the field, out on the track, and I think when that happens, you find yourself a spot, you know your role and you can go out each week and do it.
"Before that, I’d be running out thinking, ‘Geez, I hope I play well. I was always hoping. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, and that made it hard to maintain confidence or get any sort of continuity."
Jackson travelled through Vietnam and Cambodia alone last off-season, before catching up with friends in Thailand.
This September, he is headed to Europe, to visit friends in Sweden and see Madrid, but also spend five or six days in France on his own, brushing up on his French (Jackson went to a bilingual primary school in Camberwell, and kept learning the language through high school).
He doesn’t mind travelling on his own. For one thing he likes it, but he says it also makes him more social.
The same applies here. During his second year, Jackson caught a train to Docklands to watch the Tigers play.
Heading home after a loss, not wanting to get bailed up by grumpy supporters, he overheard a couple speaking French, and moved to sit near them.
"I said, ‘This is going to sound a bit odd, but I don’t get many opportunities to practise my French,’ " he said.
"We had a chat and it turned out they’d just moved over here and didn’t know anyone. I still catch up with them now, and we’ve become good friends.
"But it’s funny. I can happily go out by myself in Melbourne and it’s the same overseas; I can wander around a city all day and not talk to anyone. I prefer being on my own a lot of the time, but it forces you to meet other people, as well. I enjoy that."
Even before he joined the leadership group, Jackson tried to meet as many people as he could around his club, too.
He meets a few board members for an occasional coffee and has spent time with one of the club’s new coterie groups, a group of young businessmen and lawyers.
He has a while to go on his degree, and no idea what he’ll do with it yet, but likes speaking to people who can give him ideas.
"I try to get to as many of their functions as I can, because it’s of interest to me later in life. I’m just interested in learning about what they do, how they got there and what skills I need to develop," he said.
"There’s a group of guys at the club who are studying right now, who probably don’t have any ideas about how they’re going to get into a job, so we’ve organised with this coterie to have a bit of a business luncheon where we’ll take along eight or nine of our guys to interact with some of their guys and just talk about what they do, how they got into it, what we could possibly do, and how we might get there.
"It’s just to get some ideas, really, to figure out what’s interesting and learn a bit more about the pathway outside football. I suppose it’s like footy or like anything — the more you know, the better you’ll go."
Daniel Jackson’s cheap eatsGingerboy Crossley Street, Melbourne"I like going there for dinner. I call it retro Asian, but it’s probably a modern take on Asian cooking."
Thesherman’s Bakehouse Faraday Street, Carlton"I go there before and after uni. Good range of food, and good prices."
Soul Mama St Kilda Seabaths"This is where I go when I’m feeling really healthy. And it’s a good place to go on a date because you come across as very trendy."
Groove Train Bridge Road, Richmond"You get good breakfasts there. Good cakes, too."
Pho Hung Vuong 2 Victoria Street, Richmond"There’s a couple of places in Victoria Street I really like, but this is my favourite. I go there before every game for a noodle soup."
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