Follow The Leader

Leadership is the ability to translate vision into reality. It’s about unlocking a team’s potential and inspiring them by word, deed or a banana-kick from the boundary.

On the brink of the new AFL season, three of the game’s most respected skippers reveal their most important leadership lessons and why modern captaincy involves more than just tossing a coin.

- Luke Benedictus

JACK VINEY MELBOURNE 24

“NOT EVERYONE PREPARES FOR FOOTBALL THE SAME WAY”

An evolving grasp of man-management has turned the Demons midfielder into a true leader of men

March 31, 2013. Deep in the bowels of the MCG an inquisition has begun. Demons coach Mark Neeld is red-faced with anger. He’s just watched his team get smashed by Port Adelaide in their first-round match. The losing margin: 79 points. Any new-season optimism is already dead.

Now Neeld wants answers. Shut in the locker room, the Demons players sit around looking sheepish and avoiding eye-contact with the coach. Co-captain Jack Grimes says a few words, urging his teammates to step up and raise their game. Then there is a long and uncomfortable silence.

Finally, Jack Viney raises his voice. Input from this source is completely unexpected. Viney, after all, is a callow teenager who made his senior debut only today. What’s he got to offer a roomful of grizzled pros with hundreds of games behind them?

Today, Viney smiles at the memory. “I’ve always been taught if I see something then say something,” he recalls. “I thought we were playing for ourselves rather than working together as a team. And that we weren’t going to get too far unless we started trusting each other a bit more.”

That Viney, now the Demons’ skipper, had the balls to fire up his team as an 18-year-old rookie is a reflection of his natural authority. Not that his motivational tirade did any good. In the next round, Essendon walloped Melbourne by 148 points and his team proceeded to win just two games all season, limping to 17th place on the ladder that season and the next.