Fitzpatrick knew why. The other draftees all had been in the system. “We understood what it was about. Gawny didn’t,” he said. Gawn once said that Jack Viney had a professional attitude “at one week old”. It took him five years from draft day. He wasn’t lazy,just lost.
Early injuries,including an ACL,didn’t help. Nor did some diffidence about being a ruckman. Nor did his sense of humour then. “There’s a fine line and I’ve found it hard since day one to find the balance between the class clown and the serious guy,” he told theHerald Sun in 2015.
At Melbourne in those years,if you didn’t laugh,you cried.One infamous day at Geelong in 2011,the seniors lost by 186 points. Less remembered is that in the curtain-raiser,the Casey Scorpions - Melbourne’s reserves - lost by 128 points. Gawn played in that. It was not until his eighth year and his fifth coach that he experienced a winning season.
In 2014,former Sydney and Richmond ruckmanGreg Stafford arrived as a specialist coach with Paul Roos and has been alongside Gawn for eight years. Gawn then was a fringe AFL player and unhappy about it. Stafford says there was a distance between them at first,until a heart-to-heart away from the club one day.
“I said,regardless of what happened yesterday,for the next month,try to be the best trainer you’ve ever been and see where it takes you,” Stafford said. “He did that. It was a small first step. From that day on,he’s been the flag-bearer for training standards and what you need to do as a professional. It’s amazing when you do that what the games brings.”
It helped that Gawn was,and is,a footyhead and a ruck nerd. His mates say so,in as many words. Post-AFL,Fitzpatrick did a stint of coaching at Werribee. Gawn would text him to ask about which leg one ruckman jumped off,another’s stats. “These were guys he probably won’t ever play against,” said Fitzpatrick.
Gawn thinks of ruckplay as an art,said Stafford. “Bit by bit,we shifted the focus away from number of hit-outs and concentrated on what he was doing with them,” he said. “Are they going to the chest of a teammate? We’re not about amassing numbers,we’re looking for connection and clearance. That’s when he took ownership of the whole beast.”
You can see the outcome. Gawn is now head,shoulders and beard above the competition. He’s rarely beaten in the ruck,and ranges up astutely and down the ground as needed. His inner teenage forward won’t lie down. What could top a minor premiership-sealing,post-siren winner over Geelong in round 23? How about five more against the same team in the preliminary final?
He has been All-Australian in five of the past six seasons and it would have been six but for a serious hamstring injury. He’s the reigning All-Australian captain. He stands on Saturday on a threshold no Melbourne captain has for 57 years.
Along the way,doors have opened,luckily with high lintels. Gawn is a man of many enthusiasms. One is victuals. He used to do cooked breakfasts at home for any player who wanted it on their day off,and for a while ran a jaffle van with his brothers.
He owns a wine bar in Camberwell and is about to open another. COVID permitting,he can sometimes still be found doing the coffees at his mother’s cafe in Loch. But he’s fastidious now about his own diet,sworn off sugar and carbs since 2018. He had a sideline making tables with former teammate Matt Jones until it outgrew them both.
He is a music fan,a stand-up comedy fan,a tennis fan,a horse-racing fan,a fan of the New Zealand cricket team (who isn’t?) and he loves cycling. He’s done the demanding Peaks Challenge ride in Tasmania,and Cadel Evans’s race,and once turned up in the back of the SBS commentary van at the Giro d’Italia.
This is the unchanged Gawn,the one Stynes said should stay true. Though 208 centimetres and a superstar,he looks down on no one and sneers at nothing. He once rebuked a Melbourne staffer for not inviting him to his buck’s night - the staffer had thought not to bother him - then turned up anyway. “He’d make a good local publican,” said an old friend.
He sticks. Until COVID struck,a legion of sometime Demons - Gawn,James Frawley (his brother-in-law),James Harmes,Dean Kent,Lynden Dunn and Fitzpatrick - met in a Richmond pub every Monday night to play pool and pool thoughts. “He gets a bit of stick now when he decides to go home early,” said Fitzpatrick. “That’s his professionalism. When he first got drafted,he would have been the last one left in the pub.”
There is a bit of Gawn for and in everyone,which makes him eminently marketable as well as endearing. He has a string of endorsements as long as his arm,a newspaper column,and a couple of radio gigs,though no regular TV slot by choice. You can expect a book soon.
But none of who he is is calculated for effect,not even the flowing beard. He has said that he grew it out of laziness rather than image projection and told manager Anthony McConville he would shave it off on a whim if one took him. “I’d be horrified,” said McConville. “It’s part of his appeal. But he’s not hung up about it.” He did shave it off once,for Reach,the Stynes charity.
That quirky sense of humour,as much his trademark as his beard,is never far from the forefront. You’ve seen it in pressers and post-matches. He’s not afraid to turn it on himself,most memorably in two Google TV ads in 2018 in which he revealed a talent for acting,but also a love forGilmore Girls. “Oh,Rory,” in Gawn’s voice became a catch-cry.
It left him wide open when that season ended in an ignominious 11-goal preliminary final defeat. “Hey Google,play Max Gawn highlights” became “hey Google,play Melbourne’s first quarter against West Coast”. There have been no TV ads since,but McConville said that was a COVID-19 fall-out,not a change of policy.
At 29,Gawn is a synthesis of uber pro and urban hipster,superstar and quipster,leader and fellow traveller. You can’t have one without the other. It might have torn another man apart,but it has been the making of Gawn.
The captaincy reinforces this. The job might have changed him;instead he’s changed the job. Rather than sacrifice his personality,he’s brought the force of it to the commission. If you don’t believe it,think of another grand final captain like him in recent times. “It’s OK to be yourself,” Stynes had told him,and he still is. It’s just that he’s the standard-bearer now.
As captain,he carries the considerable weight of the Melbourne world,but wears it as lightly as he tosses off one-liners. While plotting opponents’ downfalls and fronting media conferences,he does the team’s pre-match playlists,making sure there’s something for everyone.
“I always thought he should be captain,” said a former Melbourne backroom boy,“because he could appeal to the mad dogs who were out there drinking when they shouldn’t be,and the straighty 180s because of his work ethic.”
It would be wrong to mistake jocular for casual. Gawn dislikes to lose at anything,even pub pool,friends say. “I think it takes people a while to work that out,because he has a laugh and a muck around,” said Fitzpatrick. “People can take that the wrong way.”
He has an inner reserve of confidence,another of resilience. As captain,he’s constantly on Melbourne’s case. “He knows when to be serious,” said a Melbourne insider,“and they know when he’s serious.”
To players who complained about their roles,Gawn stressed pre-season that they all had only one role,what was best for the team. It wasn’t quite JFK and “ask not what your country can do for you”,but it made the point. It’s why the Dees are where they are today.
“Since taking on the captaincy,he’s grown immeasurably,” said McConville,who has known him since he was 17. “Players and people gravitate to him.” Adds Fitzpatrick:“He’s authentic. And he has presence. He brings people along with him. People want to follow him.”
Eddie Betts’ retirement has left a vacancy for the position of everybody’s second favourite player. Right now,it’s Max Gawn’s for the taking. So is the premiership.
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