The life of an elite footballer is one most could only dream of, but what many don’t understand is the dedication it requires.
In one of the most insightful diaries ever put together by a North player, Jack Ziebell opened up on the challenges of injury, suspension and expectation to The Age’s Emma Quayle. The result is a must-read feature.
Read some of the best bits below.
Sunday March 7
He wanted to start from the perfect pre-season. He didn’t want to miss a single session, but every player wishes for that and it didn’t quite happen. Jack’s knee had annoyed him through the last few weeks of the 2012 season – it was irritating, more than painful – but there wasn’t enough damage to require post-season surgery and it didn’t bother him too much during the first few weeks of training.
The first day back after Christmas was another story, though. Jack had stuck to his training program through the two-week break, but it involved mostly straight-line running, nothing that asked too much of his knee. The first session back was a long, demanding one and having to change direction so often and so sharply made him realise there might really be something wrong.
The scans this time showed he had torn his lateral meniscus, the cartilage on the outside of his knee, and that he would need an operation after all. It was exactly what Jack had hoped to avoid; the one thing you hear players who have good seasons talk about, after all, is their uninterrupted pre-season.
Read more
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On taking the next step in his development…
“I’d much rather win a game than play well, if that makes sense. But I think it gets to a point where you want both things and you want to be relied on more to help us win, I suppose. When I got drafted there were guys at the club telling me how you blink your eyes and your career is half over. You laugh at it, a bit. It’s just impossible to imagine when you’re 17 years old and you haven’t even played one game. But I’m five years in now. I can see what they mean. You don’t want to waste time. I feel like I want to make the most of every opportunity that comes my way this year.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday June 30
After three weeks on the sidelines due to suspension for a high hit on Adelaide’s Jared Lyons…
It still grates a little that his bump was considered high, and reckless, and worth the three-match ban he accepted a little reluctantly, wanting to defend himself but not wanting to lose at the tribunal. It happened so quickly, it was instinctive and the Adelaide player wasn’t hurt – he got straight back to his feet after he was knocked over. But it’s the third time Jack has been rubbed out now, in less than three years. He knows it can’t keep happening, that his teammates need him playing, not watching.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a way, it was like going back to the pre-season. He boxed, he swam, he lifted weights. He trained when the rest of the team did, then stayed on the track to do some extra one-on-one work and lots more running, three extra sessions each week. He’d do five 200-metre sprints, 10 100-metre sprints, 10 50s and 10 30s, all in a time calculated according to his best pre-season efforts.
Once the running was done he’d do more of it: a string of 15-second sprints in which he needed to cover 95 metres, taking him to around 120 per cent of his maximum aerobic effort. Eight sprints equalled one set, and he had to do three before he was finished. “The worst thing about it is that when pre-season ends in March, you’re the happiest person in the world. Then all of a sudden you’re right back there, doing all the hard work with no games on the end of it.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack doesn’t want to change the way he plays, at all. It’s what he knows, it’s his identity, and he feels like the team needs him throwing himself at the ball, or at the player who has it. But he knows he needs to make some adjustments, to tinker, to make himself think for a moment before his feet leave the ground and he jumps into someone.
“I’m still going to play on instincts, and I don’t think I should change too much about the way I go about things. There’s just some small, little things I need to have a play with to make sure I stay on the park. It will be interesting. Hopefully I’m not in this position again, ever. I just need to find that extra little bit of control.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the last-gasp loss against Adelaide in Round 9…
The players spent more than two hours watching the Adelaide game back over, first thing the next morning. They saw all their mistakes and understood what they did wrong. They wanted to watch it, they wanted to know.
“We’ve been plastering over some things, pretending we were doing everything right but we walked out of that meeting and everyone realised what we needed to do. I know I did. It was a bit of a deep and meaningful, and we needed it, and we still have time. I still believe our best footy can beat anyone. We just need to do everything right.”
Read more
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday September 1
On a scary moment against Carlton…
Jack had hurt his leg against Carlton. He was leaning in to smother a kick, and the other player’s foot had smacked into his shin as he swung through the ball. The kick connected right where he broke his leg three years ago, and the first thing he could think to feel was sick. Had he done it again? He couldn’t tell, so he hobbled to the bench – wishing, hoping, trying to work out what he had done – when he was reminded of the old break again.
On the bench that day, back in 2009, he had been told to stand up and put weight through the leg. ‘If you can stand you can walk,’ the doctor had told him. ‘If you can walk you can run, and if you can run you can go back on.’
That sounded like a good idea, so Jack got up, put his foot on the ground and in the very next second heard a loud crack and felt his leg crumple. It was fractured, he was out for the rest of the season and so after the doctors checked his leg on the sidelines against Carlton, pushing it, pulling it, then asking him to get up and do the same thing, he couldn’t help but feel nervous.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A reflection on 2014…
He knows he’s a better player than he was six months ago. But he also knows next year will be his sixth season, that his career could almost half over. He still feels too inconsistent, too up and down. There were still weeks when he looked back at how he had prepared and known inside he had done everything right, but not played as well as he had the week before.
Still, Jack can’t imagine ever getting to the end of a season and feeling like everything had gone right, like there was nothing left to improve. He knows he will wake up tomorrow, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, and start thinking about all the things he wants to get better at.
“You can never be happy. You can never look back at the year and say, ‘Geez, I had a good year.’ I can’t picture it, anyway. There’s always things to work on. When you wake up after your last game, they’re all there. It’s like they’re waiting for you.”
Read more
