SAMANTHA LANE, football writer
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Grant Hattam Trophy for Excellence in Football Journalism The Age's football writer Samantha Lane has won the Grant Hattam Trophy, the AFL Players Association's media award. According to the AFLPA, "Lane’s insightful story 'A life’s work in progress' on the journey of Essendon player Mark Bolton spoke of the reality of 80% of AFL players, the non-superstars who strive to make an impact both on and off the field in good times and bad." October 2007 |
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A life's work in progress MARK Bolton, the academic, music loving subscriber to 3RRR, social worker and footballer, has a sense of perspective that is not only rare among his AFL peers but rare full stop. It's probably just as well. A lifelong Essendon supporter, Bolton will become a life member of the Bombers this year after a 10-year playing career that will never be rated among the great ones. Becoming an autobiographer is not on Bolton's to-do list, which is already sizeable enough. But if he was asked to pen a summary of his past decade in football, it would go something like this: "Well, I wouldn't start with the standard 'much-maligned Mark Bolton' line," he said this week. "There have been some really, really great moments, and a lot of shit ones as well." His best year? "Probably 2002," he said, before refining the response somewhat. "The second half of 2002." His best game? He doesn't believe he has played it yet. "If I didn't think I could improve, what's the point?" Coach Kevin Sheedy has not lost faith either, saying yesterday that, like Port Adelaide's much-travelled Josh Mahoney, Bolton could yet be a late bloomer. "I've always thought Mark Bolton might be able to do something, and I still do. And I'm very patient." For at least the past four years, though, Bolton's name has become synonymous with trade week and list-culling time. Essendon picked him with selection four of the 1997 national draft. Accordingly, he has been marked hard. Bolton played his 120th game last weekend. It was his third for the year and one of the best of his life. Sheedy announced well in advance that he would be picked to run with Sydney's dual Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes, who in round nine was in frighteningly good touch. At the SCG last Saturday night, Bolton not only nullified Goodes but kicked two goals. Yet in the days before Essendon's match with West Coast tonight, an outsider could not have said with any certainty that the 28-year-old Bomber would be selected. Andrew Embley, his obvious match-up, is not playing, but Sheedy believes there are still three key Eagles Bolton is equipped to handle. Before this season had even started, the coach told Bolton that he should expect to play only about a dozen, perhaps 15, games in 2007, because he would be picked to play only certain jobs. Goodes was one example. "At the time I was pretty shattered because it sort of felt a bit fait accompli. Like that was going to be my year," Bolton said. "But with a bit of distance from it, I've felt at least he's just being honest with me." In the middle of last season, Age columnist Robert Walls, in an opinion piece headlined "Essenduds", wrote that the Bombers should trade Aaron Henneman (who was delisted) and Dean Solomon (who went to Fremantle), Damien Peverill, Andrew Welsh and Bolton. If that could not be arranged, Walls said, they should "delist all but Welsh". Criticism of the like - and there has been no shortage of it - hurt Bolton in the early days. Now, he says, it just annoys him. "You pretty rapidly realise that being a victim about the whole thing doesn't get you anywhere," he said. "Contrary to popular belief, I've always known I was going to be on a list the next year. Assuming that all the stuff that your club tells you is true, and it always is in my experience." That does not mean he has not had a few nervous Octobers, although Bolton has always had plenty of other things in his life apart from football. He completed a medical science degree over six years, then worked in the respiratory units of a couple of hospitals doing lung function testing. That did not exactly inspire him and so, after renovating an area of his house, he enrolled in a diploma in building. Bolton is halfway through a masters in property and construction at Melbourne University. Every second Wednesday evening, until about midnight, he and a handful of footballers travel around Melbourne's back streets in a Salvation Army van, serving tea and coffee to city folk living rough. Last year, after reading a newspaper article about some disused land in the CBD that was owned by the State Government, Bolton dreamt of building a facility that would provide housing, education and mentoring for homeless people under 25. He phoned an Essendonsupporting former state premier, Joan Kirner, and talked to her about it. She put him in touch with the appropriate state departments and, within a month, Bolton had won $3 million in funding. "People who have been in philanthropy for a lifetime have said they've never seen anyone get that sort of money in so short a time," chief executive of the AFL Players Association Brendon Gale said this week. Ever since his first visit to Parliament House, Bolton has been conscious of the doors football can open. Having teamed up with the AFL and the players' union, he is working closely with Richmond's Joel Bowden on a business plan for a national housing model. He aims to project manage the building of at least one facility in each of the football states, which will keep him busy long after he's done in his current full-time job." He's an intelligent man with a good feel for the community, and I'd rather keep blokes like him around," Sheedy said. "I'd rather have a bloke like him than a superstar, who would turn up but never really be there anyway." Asked to name his best football moments, Bolton refers immediately to last weekend's game in Sydney. He also mentions the 2001 comeback win over the Kangaroos, Anzac Day games, a trip the club made at the start of this year to the community of Wadeye, and the thrill of seeing his name appear under Ken Fraser's on the No. 23 locker at Windy Hill after he played his 100th game. Being part of a winning preliminary final side, in 2001, was another standout, but it was followed by one of Bolton's greatest downers. "I was dropped for the grand final for Matthew Lloyd, so it wasn't something that you can blame anyone for. It was just one of those things." As early as the day he'd been so badly deflated, Bolton was seeing the bigger picture. "A couple of us were running a program at a kids' prison. That day was their last of a six-week course. "The kids' big finale was having a game of footy on their oval. It wouldn't have been much bigger than this cafe. They couldn't kick too high because it'd go over the fence and the game would stop. In that context, things for me weren't too bad." You would never fool Bolton that a football match was akin to "war", or that a result was a matter of "life or death". Could his sense of perspective have made him less hard-edged than some of his peers, and even been to his detriment as a player? It's not an easy proposition for him to discuss. "Whether that perspective is also a defence mechanism because my tenure as a footballer's been fairly shaky for the last sort of couple of years, I don't know," he said. "But I've made a real effort not to let football define who I am as a person." Bolton knows he may have only four months left to play. But, doing the maths, he quickly says he might yet have another 16 or even 28 months. "I've got no regrets about my career at all," he said. For Sheedy, keeping the likes of Bolton is an investment in the fabric of his football club. "Everyone's not on the superstar scale," he said. "There's only a handful you'll get, maybe four a decade. The easiest thing is to keep sacking people all the time because they aren't a champion. Well, they're not all champions." In the couple of hours that footballers are marked on each week, Bolton would rarely have been mentioned in the same breath as the top-tier performers. But in the many hours in between, very few would better him. Sheedy has seen hundreds of footballers come and go at Windy Hill, and met thousands more in his football lifetime. "You won't meet many better men than Mark Bolton," he said. THE TOP TEN OF 1997 AFL national draft 1 Travis Johnstone (Melb) 154 games 2 Brad Ottens (Rich) 174 games 3 Trent Croad (Haw) 188 games 4 MARK BOLTON (Ess) 120 games 5 Luke Power (Bris) 185 games 6 James Walker (Frem) 148 games 7 Kris Massie (Carl) 107 games 8 Chris Tarrant (Coll) 171 games 9 Chad Cornes (PA) 170 games 10 Shane O'Bree (Bris) 178 games (Ottens has played 45 games with Geelong; Croad played 38 games with Fremantle; Massie has played 64 games with Adelaide; Tarrant has played 10 games with Fremantle; O'Bree has played 159 games with Collingwood) NO. 4 DRAFT PICKS 1986 - Richard Anderson (Richmond) 0 games 1987 - Andrew Brockhurst (Fitzroy) 38 games 1988 - John McNamara (Nth Melb) 0 games 1989 - Peter Matera (WC) 253 games 1990 - Jason McCartney (Coll) 182 games 1991 - Andrew McGovern (Syd) 83 games 1992 - Justin Leppitsch (Bris) 227 games 1993 - Glenn Gorman (Syd) 2 games 1994 - Scott Lucas (Ess) 235 games 1995 - Scott Bamford (Fitz) 59 games 1996 - Mark Kinnear (Syd) 6 games 1997 - Mark Bolton (Ess) 120 games 1998 - Ryan Fitzgerald (Syd) 18 games 1999 - Matthew Pavlich (Frem) 163 games 2000 - Luke Livingston (Carl) 46 games 2001 - Graham Polak (Frem) 83 games 2002 - Tim Walsh (WB) 1 game 2003 - Farren Ray (WB) 51 games 2004 - Richard Tambling (Rich) 42 games 2005 - Josh Kennedy (Carl) 17 games 2006 - Matthew Leuenberger (BL) 0 games Jason McCartney also played for Adelaide and North Melbourne; Glenn Gorman's two games were for North Melbourne, in 1996; Scott Bamford also played for Brisbane and Geelong; Ryan Fitzgerald also played for Adelaide Published: Friday, June 8, 2007 |
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