Credit: Ashley Browne, AFL Record
You’ve been playing footy of some sort for more than 20 years now. Do you still enjoy it?
Sam Mitchell: I enjoy it for different reasons now. You enjoy it at the start because you try to work out if you’re good enough to do it. Then you want to have team success. Now there’s team success, but there’s a helping the other blokes component and you get a reward out of seeing other blokes do things that you may have had a hand in teaching them.
Shaun Burgoyne: There is still enjoyment in playing but now that I’m coming to the end…
SM: (laughing) Are you coming to the end Shaun? That’s the first time I’ve heard you admit that.
SB: I don’t know when it is going to end so I’m a bit more appreciative of playing now. You go out there realising it could be taken away at any stage. Any game could be your last. There are things you take for granted when you’re younger.
Do the losses still cut at you?
SB: We are competitive people so we want to win everything. Watch ‘Mitch’ play Hacky Sack with the kids upstairs, he doesn’t want to lose at that and they all want to beat him. Even the coaches join in the fun stuff we do and they don’t want to lose. We’re all competitive people.
SM: Sometimes you can win and you’ve played badly. The plans you have set haven’t worked or you haven’t executed them properly and that can be not as bad as a loss. Sometimes you win when you don’t deserve to and that can leave you a bit flat. If you play really well and lose, which thankfully doesn’t happen to us much because when we play well we tend to win, sometimes you play well and lose and it’s not that bad because you see you’re on the right track. When you get a reality check it's after the hard loss because you know you’re not as good.
Does the enjoyment of a good win with your teammates get spoiled sometimes because there are TV cameras and microphones in your faces when you walk off the ground and sing the song?
SM: I think so. We understand that if we want to get paid good money there has to be media because that’s what people want and pay for and eventually that money ends up in our pockets, but the only thing that annoys me about cameramen is like…all those great Grand Final photos with the cup and there’s a cameraman right next to me getting then photo from behind. If he weren't there it would be a great photo. But it’s part of the game and something you have to bear in mind.
Do you still enjoy winning?
SB: It’s a great feeling that never goes away.
Josh Gibson said recently he’s borderline OCD with his preparation. What about you guys?
SB: For me it's now about putting the preparation in during the week to get my body right to play. As you get older you need to put some more time into recovery. If you do the work early in the week and ‘Mitch’ is the same when you have kids, my routine pre-kids is much different to what it is now. Now it's about making the kids are all right and they go to sleep so I can go to sleep and in the morning getting their breakfast ready so I can go. As long as my kids aren’t yelling and screaming the morning of the game or leading up to the game, then I’ve had a good preparation and I’m happy.
SM: The thing for me is that if you do the best preparation you can then that gives you confidence. If I stay up till 11pm because I’m enjoying the TV then I know I’ve done the wrong thing and that’s not the right prep. But if you’re up till two in the morning because the kids are crying, you’ve still done the best you could and that gives you confidence going into the game. I was very OCD before I had kids but when my wife became pregnant the first time she got very sick and was in the hospital till four in the morning. I’d hardly slept and we played that night and I ended up playing OK, so all that crap I’d been doing till then was useless. It was shocking preparation and I played well so after that I threw a lot of stuff I’d been doing out the window. It was lucky because as I had more kids and more variables in my life that I couldn’t control I had to flexible. Now we talk about arousal levels... (laughs)..is there another word? But I play my best footy when I’m quite relaxed and calm whereas other guys like Jordan Lewis, when he’s a bit fidgety and antsy he plays his best footy. Shauny, what’s your arousal level like?
SB: I play my best footy when I’m relaxed before the game.
SM: There are some guys who don’t like a joke beforehand.
SB: There are some guys who are full-on serious and if you joke with them it takes their mind off what they’re trying to do. I need to laugh and relax. But we go into little groups - guys over here who are serious, guys over there who like a bit of a laugh. The more I laugh it takes my mind of the game, so I don’t think about it. The physios are a good place to be, they like to have a laugh and they give some back.
SM: The thing about our club is that fun is encouraged. I’ve been in footy clubs where if you’re having fun they think you’re not being professional. We don’t have that attitude. We try to make it fun, but not to the point where you’re doing things outside of it that you shouldn’t be doing. If you’re having fun, it’s not frowned upon, it’s not like ‘you’d better perform if you’re carrying on like that’, everyone understands that. If I’m playing Hacky Sack or kicking balls at people, it’s not like I’m being a smartarse. That’s my preparation and that’s accepted and you’re very free to prepare how you like.
SB: Having music in the change room cuts the tension. We have music playing, some guys like to listen to it, or have iPods in their ears and that takes the tension away before the game. When a good song comes on you get around whoever made the mix, and if it’s crap you get stuck into them. It helps break the tension and gets you into the game.
Football is very regimented. You are poked and prodded and your wellness is regularly recorded. Do you ever get jack of that?
SM: There’s not so much of that. We have to register our wellness a few times a week but it takes 10 minutes. After a game we fill out the individual development plan and that takes 10 or 15 minutes once a week. I don’t get on the scales every week. When you’re younger and they’re trying to register what works, it’s much more regimented, but once you get a bit older…also the emotional toll can make you tired and not play as well and have enough energy for the contest. I think Hawthorn is pretty good at understanding that some of the older blokes don’t have to do the tiny, regimented things all the time and you can get another year out mentally because you haven’t had to be so regimented…and its not like you take short cuts with the important things. We would get our skin folds taken less because they’re always the same. We’ve been doing this four a long time. There’s a lot of freedom and trust in our program and one thing I’ll miss when I retire is the trust this place has in you. They give you a lot of freedom to go about your business. If you tell them a bit sore and you only want to do half the session then they’ll trust you that you know your body well enough to make that decision. 'Shauny' hardly does any running in the pre-season and we’ll laugh and heckle him about it but we know he’ll be right to play.
Playing to Win paints the picture of these recovery sessions after night games that finish at 1am. That can’t be glamorous.
SB: It’s not that glamorous.
SM: They’re kind of fun.
SB: We enjoy each other’s company. You do the recovery, talk about the game with the boys and have a laugh about something someone did during the game. But then we get to sleep in the next morning, we’re not up at eight or nine o’clock doing our recovery. As Mitch said that trust comes into it.
SM: There’s an informal review going on as well. You’re lying on the massage table next to someone and it sounds funny to be lying on a massage table at midnight next to other blokes, but you do this informal review, ask about this incident or that and then you go home and you have a fair idea what happened in the game. Sometimes you go home and you ask yourself ‘What were the themes out of the game? How did we win or why did we lose?’ and sometimes you’re miles off. But with this there’s a group feel about the game and the group conversation helps you understand how well some of the guys played. It’s an enjoyable debrief and you cant sleep anyway. It’s not like you get home with all the adrenalin flowing and get straight to sleep. That doesn’t happen. It’s a good way to wind down.
You guys are pushing 30 and there are now 18 year olds coming into the club. How do you feel with the generation gap?
SM: (laughing) Shaun just doesn’t talk to them.
SB: It’s quite funny. These kids were born in ’94 and ’95 and you listen to their music in the gym and it’s not to our liking. You put up with it and accept that we’re all different. But it’s good to have the blend and it keeps us young, jumping in the spa with them, hearing their stories and remembering we used to do the same when we were their age.
SM: The generation gap is too large to be best mates, but it almost ends up like an older brother, mentoring type of relationship, who has a laugh, saying ‘I remember when we used to do that sort of thing’ or ‘Have you ever tried doing this?’. That’s us helping them. But also, Shaun and I are the only players on the list who don’t do Instagram. We went to Tasmania for the community camp and they had this ‘Discover Tasmania’ challenge and they listed everyone’s Instagram address and they laughed at us because we don’t have one. Social media illustrates the generation gap but we live vicariously through them as well as them learning from us.
What did you think of each other as opponents?
SM: You have opinions on players when they’re your opponent and you see them at their competitive best. But they’re completely different when they become teammates. At Port we used to send Kane Cornes to him every time to tag him…
SM: Nothing’s changed.
SB: He’s had a decorated career and straight away you knew you would get a guy who fights for every possession. His standing in the game is only getting higher and higher. You had to tag him straight away. And he still does (get tagged) which is great because I can then run around free. The other thing is that I once got a three-week suspension for knocking him out!
SM: We were playing in Tassie, and I had my head over the ball and he really flushed me. I didn’t ever get a free kick, he ran off me and kicked a goal and then got three weeks.
SB: I was quite pumped. But the week before we played in the All Stars game and we swapped jumpers. That was quite funny. So we swapped jumpers, I then got reported and two years later we were teammates.
SM: I remember you had to be careful playing against Shaun Burgoyne because he wasn’t an accumulator who got 30 touches game. He might get five in a quarter, kick four goals and set up another. He was someone you had to keep an eye on and every time we played Port we would talk about him and have plan. He was very versatile and could play back, forward or midfield. he could be really damaging and someone you wouldn’t let under your guard. He was arguably their no.1 player but you couldn’t put your best tagger on him necessarily because you didn’t know where he was going to play.
Were you consulted on bringing Shaun to Hawthorn given you were captain at the time?
SM: The first question I asked was about his knee because he had missed some footy that year, but if it was fine then he was obviously a player we’d love to have. Before he came we had Cyril for some ‘X factor’ but a bit more with someone who could break the lines, go to full-forward and play the game a bout differently to what we had would have been good. He was a top end player who wanted to come for the right reasons and that’s a question we always ask. I’m sure he gets paid well but it wasn’t all about the money for Shaun, but he’s a family man with kids and I thought he would fit the culture. Sometimes they ask about a player and you know a few skeletons in the closet you can tell the coaching staff, but with Shaun it was if you can get him then let’s do it.
Alastair Clarkson has played a big part in both your careers. What has he meant to you both?
SM: It’s been a long journey with him, nearly a decade. When he first got appointed I thought he was Alastair Nicholson. I didn’t know anything about him then I learned he belted some blokes in that game in London. When he came he just opened up the modern game to the club, did these things that were frowned upon outside the club, but internally he would explain them and made you buy into his vision. His best attribute is that he has never hung the players out to dry. If he has a plan and the players just don’t execute it, he would never come out in the media and say the players didn’t execute his plan and that’s why we lost. He is very protective of his players, he reads the media and tells us we’re never as good or as bad as they say. It’s about what we can control internally. He is very big on compliance and it took some time to develop some trust that we’re all on the right page and pulling in the right direction. he admits his mistakes, puts his hand up and I have a lot of respect for a coach that can do that.
How has he changed in the 10 years since you knew him at Port Adelaide?
SB: Not too much. When he came to Port was always playing jokes, having a laugh and building relationships with the players. One of the first things he did was make me visit sick kids in the hospital to better ground me and to put football in perspective. It’s one of the main reasons I came here because I had great respect for him and a great bond. I still see the same guy now, but he’s a bit smarter and bit more serious. But he still likes a joke and to take the piss out of people.
SM: But he has evolved from being a complete hard-ass to relaxing and giving us more power, then more into driving us hard again. Now he’s gone back to player empowerment and he has continued to evolve himself. It would be hard to play for a coach who gives you the same thing each week, year in and year out.
So what gets you out of bed six days a week to come to the football club?
SM: (laughing) My son, the little twerp. He wakes up so early.
SB: I just love coming to training. You know there are going to be 48 players at the club with whom you have a bond and I enjoy being with them, mucking around, having a laugh and not taking yourself too seriously. It’s something I’ll miss when I’m not playing any more, which is hopefully a few years away.
SM: I enjoy two things. One is, as ‘Shauny' says, the fun environment we want to create. You learn best when you’re having fun. There’s a time to be serious and a time to be fun, I play Hacky Sack for hours and that’s working on your foot skills while you’re having fun with your mates. The other thing I enjoy is the challenge of a new opponent each week, plotting their demise looking at what we planned what worked, looking at opposition tape and brainstorming strategy about them, which we have a lot of freedom to do.
If you don’t win another flag from here, would you feel unfulfilled?
SM: If you don’t win 10 flags you probably feel unfulfilled. I don’t think you’re ever satisfied and I full unfulfilled because we didn’t win in 2012 when we were in a position where we could have and even 2011 where we were pretty good and had things gone our way just a little we could have won another one. Fulfilment is a strange world. I guess when I started out on this journey I wanted to be able to get to the end not say ‘Gee, I wish I had done a bit more’. So far I look back on my career and think it would have been hard to achieve much more from my personal efforts but as long as you can look in the mirror and see you did what you could to give the team every chance of success, then that’s fulfilment enough.
SB: I’ll be happy to wait until I retire and think about it then. I don’t want to look into the future and think abut if we won another flag or if we didn’t. To win one flag is why I played footy in the first place, so to have won two has already given me so much pleasure.
