Round 12 – Sydney v Western Bulldogs: Barracking for Towers

 

 

Last Thursday, after driving an hour, then training, I went with a teammate to the small country pub across the road. The two of us had the simple pleasure of being the only ones in there, drinking more than we should in order to keep the place open, watching Sydney versus Footscray. Grunt versus flair. Watching the Swans No.22, Dean Towers.

 

Dean’s from the same place as me. We talk, on average, every few weeks, about any and everything, as mates do. I don’t hassle about his footy. He’d be getting enough pressure and advice from all corners and then some.

 

Fifteen touches. That’s all the stats sheets say he got. One of the least on the ground. Barely a fistful of Dreamteam points. Yet stats aren’t everything.

 

Dean’s father was a Champion of Otway, a B&F winner. Class to go with our grunt – the loggers and dairy farmers pushing through the Gellibrand fog. Dean’s first year of senior footy was my 28^th, and last there. If playing for Otway taught me one thing, it was that differences don’t matter a damn. Not in age, football ability or vocation. Not at bonfire parties that go for three days, the pub, or around the footy club. You’re either a good person or not. You either have a dip or not. Damn, I love that club.

 

I was an over the hill hack, he was a kid, but we always stayed out after training and did extra work together. For no reason and every reason. Because we loved footy.  Several years later, 4am in my mountain cabin in NE Tassie, I was tinkering on some book before work on the plantation crews. The telly was on in the background, and there he was, running around for North Ballarat. We got back in touch. All grown and going to uni, Dean was still working for his dad, plumbing on holidays.

 

I was surprised and pleased he’d made it that far. There was nothing stand-out brilliant about the Dean Towers I knew as a young footballer. Talking, I really enjoyed his attitude to the game, and life. No bullshit, positive. Like his old man. Then I remembered how much he loved to learn. Rising, well into his footy career, as far as the VFL, is made sense. This time we stayed in contact.

 

Soon, he was drafted to the Swans at pick 22. A 24 year old, ready made player. I had always barracked for him, from day one, running around in the Otway mud, as I did all the kids. But the work ethic to get that far, long after most blokes would have given up, both didn’t surprise and gave me something to further barrack for. Dean was the personal touch. That bit of our footy in the Otways, our culture, our friendships, out there, amongst the plastic and glamour. Surrounded by football legends and metro haircuts and pretty boy tattoos that scream trendy cafes, and would not last a second around the spud farmers and plantation workers up on the Ridge at the Lavers Hill Tavern.

 

That personal touch, for some of us, it’s everything. Out insight. Our lungs with which we inhale the smell of footy ovals, not just watch them.

 

It took Dean over a year to clock up his first few games, most of which were in the dreaded orange vest. Recruited as a half back, fast enough to play midfield, he became a tall-ish forward in a forward line that had recruited Buddy, Tippett, Reid, and already had Goodes. I would see him follow team structures, team and individual rules and game plans. Get out of the way of the names. Create space for them. To me, he looked lost at times. The same thing that got him drafted as a mature recruit – his ability to listen, learn and put the team first, the fact he was so coachable – was working against him. He wasn’t seizing the ball. Wasn’t attacking it as if he belonged out there. He wasn’t running to the places he’d normally run. It seemed he was too conscious, not of the opposition, but his teammates. His instincts stifled.

 

Each ball-up he would stand on the defensive side. This made it impossible to get the ball, or the handball out back, and kick a goal. But that was the instruction. Where he belonged.

 

His role, simply, defied big tallies.

 

It must have been hard for him, learning, adapting, not getting the stats he otherwise might, which left him only one or two quiet games short of being dropped again.

 

Mates would look at his stats, and not see these small things, coaching things, that seemed so obvious.

 

I would wonder how much the coaching panel up there saw them? Dean would be the handball that led to the kick that led to the goal. That stuff is easily missed. It would drive me mad. When a few of the bigger names couldn’t play in one final, he was given a more key role and had a blinder.

 

Ten or so games into his career Dean made a few decisions in the dying seconds of games that panned out badly for the Swans. They weren’t good. He got branded. People saw the mature recruit, not the bloke still learning the top level. He put that behind him to play some bloody good footy, but, last season got injured at the wrong time of the year and missed the Grand Final.

 

I wondered how much of that was the coaches worrying about Dean’s decision-making? I mean, players with broken necks, if required, get enough juice pumped into them to play that one day, and burn all tomorrows. I’m sure Dean would have.

 

In some ways Dean reminds me of Gary ‘Crazy Horse’ Cowton, the 70s North premiership winger. You’re heart was on your sleeve each time he got the ball. But that was what made it so good following him! The highs and lows, the tension, all in one game.

 

Dean, to me, is not that natural a footballer, he does make the odd blue, overthinks it, but damn he tries. He runs! He runs and runs and runs – to where he’s asked to. A forward pocket who marks in the back pocket then kicks and sets off. A bloke who smothers and chases and tackles. Who breaks lines on the way back through the middle. Who takes them on, busting through, or drawing players, then feeding off to teammates free of traffic. Who is crisp overhead and always, always, puts team first and tries, regardless of scores, to the very end.

 

Like last year before he got injured, a few games in a row make the world of difference. Stats lie, all the time. Yes, against the Bulldogs Dean only got 15 touches, but 5 of his possessions lead to Swans goals. In a tally of 12, I thought that was huge. He covered ground, made contests, within the role the club has assigned him. He looked, to me, like a solidly senior player. I thought his game was terrific.

 

I left the pub, into the cold Tassie air of its empty carpark glad about everything.

 

It’s funny, watching the one player you notice so much more, how everybody else sets up. Where Kennedy is, Hannebery, Papley, Zak Jones? Who runs where and how much? If the ruckman is winning it. Where and how they hit it if they do. Who they look for, who the coaches get to do the blocking. How the backmen set up stoppages, the forwards. You have a barometer. You see far more clearly where the pieces fit.

 

When, over the past few weeks, Papley burnt him twice, I raised an eyebrow. When Papley burnt Buddy I lowered it again. Papley is simply a true forward pocket – fair enough. It’s what they do. Kick the winning goal, but also sometimes too often go for glory.

 

Dean always greets a Swans goal with a mighty smile and congratulations to the goal kicker as if they were in each other’s bridal party after growing up together then serving in the same platoon. When one senior player never responded, my eyebrow raised.

 

Then I noticed the senior player was simply no frills. He works too hard to care about fist pumping, bum slapping. ‘So what if I kicked a goal. There’s another contest to win.’ Gloriously old school.

 

When Dean played deep forward two years ago, I noticed, in close games, how many players ignored his leads and bombed points from outside 50. I get Dean is no Tex Walker, Josh Kennedy, or Buddy – but it was a great insight into where the Swans, a team supposedly built on selflessness, were at.

 

We didn’t talk about it, but as a mate I found it bloody frustrating.

 

Try it some time. Follow the one player. It helps you see the game unfold.

 

Against the Dogs, Sydney’s pressure game worked. With a few quality Footscray backmen out, Sydney’s forwards worked. Sydney won big in the ruck. They won the hard ball in the middle, the clearances, and made less mistakes.

 

The Doggies’ dizzying play-on game, so toe-to-toe electric against similar teams like St Kilda and Geelong, brought them undone. Dean entered packs at great speed and, for a forward pocket, got his possessions in an even spread around the ground.

 

The week before, against a more structured Hawthorn, and their relentless chip-across-half-back, maintain-possession game, Sydney, leaving Buddy one-out, were picked apart. Despite Sydney winning most of the hard ball, Hawthorn attacked time and again, without any real pressure, from the half back line. Dean’s opponents didn’t follow him on forays into the Hawthorn forward line. They waited back for the ball. He got caught between the two in several occasions and didn’t have that great a game. The same went for almost all the Sydney forwards. He wasn’t bad, just not electric.

 

Comparing the two games made me love the Doggies. Win or lose, you’ll be entertained. It also made me bored with Hawthorn, despite their champions, their discipline and flags. The heart knows what the eye likes to see. Abandon.

 

It’s funny how earnest and stressed people were about the game being ‘strangled to death’ under the Paul Roos and Ross Lyons of the world. Sydney made a name for themselves, over a decade, with grit, with pressure. Watching them now, though, that’s a one trick pony in a new and varied carnival. As with every few years or decade, or half a season, the game fluxes, the pendulum swings, it gloriously evolves. So fast, I wonder, sometimes, how players like Montagna, Gibbs, Harry Taylor, anyone over 25 keeps up? They seem so yesterday.

 

Yet they adapt. It’s a thing to behold.

 

The brilliance of backmen, their sure hands around packs, their ball handling around their ankles, their spread, their ability to spoil, the way they fan – everything is new again. The game is no longer about possession alone. A number of teams barge forward, devil may care, taking risks and committing turnovers, relying on the back six, plus on-ballers pushing back, to set them up again and again.

 

Just ask Adelaide: Score more that the other mob, win. Be too quick of heart for flooding or rolling zones.

 

At half time I watched Dean as he, Buddy and Reid were being talked to by the forwards coach. He looked a man at home amongst giants. And he is. He’s been there long enough it appears he finally knows he’s not getting in the way, that he belongs.

 

Sometimes I wonder how he copes with the constantly spinning nature of today’s game. The varying coaching styles of each club. The way most teams buy into their leader’s vision, the way it ripples through their lines. Does he feel like he’s playing against his opponent, or opposition team? The opposition coach? The tracks he’s instructed to run along, how much is Dean an extension of his coaching staff? How much is he is own man?

 

The Swans won last week. Their pressure game beat the Doggies’ pace and flair.

 

I barracked for my great mate, playing up in Sydney, from a small pub on a dead Thursday while the barwoman put chairs upside down on the tables around me. Savouring each moment, as I do every week he gets a game. If only because I know it can’t last. One day Dean Towers’ career will be over, (and so will Toby Nankervis’, a former Tassie teammate, and mate) and I’ll have no-one left to bring the AFL back into my world. To anchor it and make it real. To give it scale. To give me reason to barrack from the ribs. Every single game Dean plays at that level I’m glad for him, but also grateful.

 

When Dean and Toby leave the AFL, footy will still be on the telly. I’ll still watch the strangers playing it, but my like and dislike of them will be more superficial.

 

When that happens I’ll still have bush footy, a thing I live for. And a mate, a great mate, no matter what level he plays at, or where he goes, who I can call, or can call me, and talk about the anything but football.