bornadog
11-04-2014, 11:20 PM
Peter Hanlon (http://www.theage.com.au/afl/by/Peter-Hanlon)
Senior sports writer for The Age
http://images.theage.com.au/2014/04/11/5343077/1397210649476.jpg-620x349.jpg
Quiet confidence: Jack Macrae has made a big impression at the Bulldogs as a skilful ball-winner and fine reader of the play. Photo: Ken Irwin
Asked to use Jack Macrae as a prompt in a game of word association, his elder statesman teammate Bob Murphy chooses "inner confidence". Western Bulldogs recruiter Simon Dalrymple calls it self-belief, a quality he says the 19-year-old has in the best possible way.
In his time identifying football talent, Dalrymple has seen kids who put on an act, hoping to sell themselves as young men of conviction. Others are over-confident, "but at least you can shake that". But in a high-performance, competitive environment, building esteem is a big ask when it's not there to begin with.
"It's a difficult thing to measure, but Jack's got enormous self-belief," Dalrymple says.
http://images.theage.com.au/2014/04/11/5343080/1397210649649.jpg-620x349.jpg
Jack Macrae racks up the stats. Photo: Getty Images
Not that he makes a commotion about it, or much of a noise at all. Macrae paints a picture of himself and Nathan Hrovat – two of five Carey Grammar students drafted in 2012 – arriving at Whitten Oval as something of an odd couple. "He's a good mate of mine, but he's very different to me," he says of a recruit who was quickly dubbed "The Rat", and who never shuts up. Hrovat gave his friend a wall of sound to shelter behind. "I'm a bit different, a bit quieter."
Macrae reckons it was several months before he heard Liam Picken speak, but the left-footer with the self-described "lanky figure" gives him a run for his hushed money. Macrae has grown three centimetres and put on 10 kilograms (to be 191cm and 84kg) since arriving at the club, yet walks the corridors with head bowed, happy with a life in the shadows.
Until he gets on a football ground.
"It's white-line fever, I guess, I just love having the ball in my hands and wanting to use my voice. I save my voice up for the weekend."
This selective boisterousness extends to telling teammates young and old where they should be standing at stoppages – in a constructive manner that underscores Murphy's snapshot. "The coaches have made it pretty clear ... they want me to use my voice to help set up the ground, and I know it as well as all the leadership boys."
Just 16 games into what is shaping up as a rich career, Macrae is a player whom coach Brendan McCartney says isn't shy about his understanding of the game.
"You should take pride in your knowledge of the field and of footy," Macrae says. "I love footy ... it's something I don't see as a chore."
A factor in developing such an old head on young shoulders was an experience that can scar, but as Macrae tells it was instrumental in his early maturity. His parents divorced when he was three, and both have new partners and children who are much younger than Jack and his 22-year-old brother Tom.
When Finlay (11) and Lucia (eight) arrived on their father's side, and their mum had now 12-year-old Harrison, Jack and Tom were charged with playing a strong role in their young lives. "Our parents made it clear that they'd look up to us," says Macrae, who effectively became the sole older brother when Tom's graphic design career took him to the Gold Coast.
"Having that younger family, having to be a role model, made me more mature quickly. I have a lot of fun with them. It's good to be looked up to."
Dalrymple has a mate who played cricket against the future Bulldog's father. David Macrae was described as a wicketkeeper who stood up to the stumps, kept batsmen on their toes and was "a ruthless competitor".
"You can see that sitting just underneath with Jack, there's a steely determination there."
It came to the fore after a bottom-age TAC Cup year in which he didn't make the Oakleigh Chargers' list despite his Carey coach, former Kangaroo David King, thinking he was good enough to play for the state. Good mates Jason Ashby (now Essendon) and Kristian Jaksch (GWS) were flying, and Macrae was stranded playing school footy.
He calls it "a building year", one that forged resilience and drove him on. Over the summer between year 11 and 12 he worked with a running coach and sought help with his kicking from former Blue Ian Aitken ("a bit of work on my ball drop, quick release of the footy"). The rewards were immediate.
Four rounds into the 2012 TAC Cup season, Dalrymple's scouts reported that Macrae had just enjoyed the best month of any youngster in Australia. "It was exciting because he was a new player who wasn't even on our talent list at the start of the year, and now he was a definite AFL player."
He was racking up 30-possession games for fun but wouldn't rest; getting drafted had become his top priority. In the first game of the under-18 championships, Vic Metro suffered a shock loss to Northern Territory. Macrae says "they dropped nearly 18 players after that", but he held his spot, was shifted forward in the next game and kicked four in a quarter. "I grew from there."
Now he has played two 30-possession games in the first three rounds of the season. He'd by lying if he said getting heaps of the ball wasn't fun, but insists he knows it's not about the numbers. "There's a lot of steps that go into playing well."
Still, it's impossible not to hear the hype – that among a gifted group, Macrae is shaping as a player who in years to come will be front and centre in the Bulldogs' showroom. His parents pass on snippets of the glowing talk they hear, and Finlay tells him after every game how he went in his fantasy football team. He's learning to treat it as merely more noise.
"I'm not fazed by it, I'm a bit embarrassed by it if anything. What we're building, it's a collective effort."
His mother has long worked with domestic violence cases, another slice of reality Macrae says had a grounding effect on her children. "That's been a big eye-opener, hearing the sort of stuff she deals with daily, that's opened my eyes to how lucky I've been growing up in a fortunate family."
Now he feels blessed to be in the Bulldog family, surrounded by contemporaries who are on the same page, helped by senior players Macrae says "have really bought in to nurturing us, haven't been selfish and looked after themselves". On Saturday GWS awaits, another promising young outfit with a long-range mission of finals and premierships. He embraces this battle and, with Gold Coast too, the many to come.
Former Cat Joel Corey, a similar personality, has been "huge" in teaching him how to build a platform by doing every little thing right. "Any player can have a good game, but the best players do it each week, each week, no matter who the opposition is."
The best players make their self-belief come true.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/jack-macrae-backing-up-his-selfbelief-20140410-zqt6i.html#ixzz2yaEBiCco
Senior sports writer for The Age
http://images.theage.com.au/2014/04/11/5343077/1397210649476.jpg-620x349.jpg
Quiet confidence: Jack Macrae has made a big impression at the Bulldogs as a skilful ball-winner and fine reader of the play. Photo: Ken Irwin
Asked to use Jack Macrae as a prompt in a game of word association, his elder statesman teammate Bob Murphy chooses "inner confidence". Western Bulldogs recruiter Simon Dalrymple calls it self-belief, a quality he says the 19-year-old has in the best possible way.
In his time identifying football talent, Dalrymple has seen kids who put on an act, hoping to sell themselves as young men of conviction. Others are over-confident, "but at least you can shake that". But in a high-performance, competitive environment, building esteem is a big ask when it's not there to begin with.
"It's a difficult thing to measure, but Jack's got enormous self-belief," Dalrymple says.
http://images.theage.com.au/2014/04/11/5343080/1397210649649.jpg-620x349.jpg
Jack Macrae racks up the stats. Photo: Getty Images
Not that he makes a commotion about it, or much of a noise at all. Macrae paints a picture of himself and Nathan Hrovat – two of five Carey Grammar students drafted in 2012 – arriving at Whitten Oval as something of an odd couple. "He's a good mate of mine, but he's very different to me," he says of a recruit who was quickly dubbed "The Rat", and who never shuts up. Hrovat gave his friend a wall of sound to shelter behind. "I'm a bit different, a bit quieter."
Macrae reckons it was several months before he heard Liam Picken speak, but the left-footer with the self-described "lanky figure" gives him a run for his hushed money. Macrae has grown three centimetres and put on 10 kilograms (to be 191cm and 84kg) since arriving at the club, yet walks the corridors with head bowed, happy with a life in the shadows.
Until he gets on a football ground.
"It's white-line fever, I guess, I just love having the ball in my hands and wanting to use my voice. I save my voice up for the weekend."
This selective boisterousness extends to telling teammates young and old where they should be standing at stoppages – in a constructive manner that underscores Murphy's snapshot. "The coaches have made it pretty clear ... they want me to use my voice to help set up the ground, and I know it as well as all the leadership boys."
Just 16 games into what is shaping up as a rich career, Macrae is a player whom coach Brendan McCartney says isn't shy about his understanding of the game.
"You should take pride in your knowledge of the field and of footy," Macrae says. "I love footy ... it's something I don't see as a chore."
A factor in developing such an old head on young shoulders was an experience that can scar, but as Macrae tells it was instrumental in his early maturity. His parents divorced when he was three, and both have new partners and children who are much younger than Jack and his 22-year-old brother Tom.
When Finlay (11) and Lucia (eight) arrived on their father's side, and their mum had now 12-year-old Harrison, Jack and Tom were charged with playing a strong role in their young lives. "Our parents made it clear that they'd look up to us," says Macrae, who effectively became the sole older brother when Tom's graphic design career took him to the Gold Coast.
"Having that younger family, having to be a role model, made me more mature quickly. I have a lot of fun with them. It's good to be looked up to."
Dalrymple has a mate who played cricket against the future Bulldog's father. David Macrae was described as a wicketkeeper who stood up to the stumps, kept batsmen on their toes and was "a ruthless competitor".
"You can see that sitting just underneath with Jack, there's a steely determination there."
It came to the fore after a bottom-age TAC Cup year in which he didn't make the Oakleigh Chargers' list despite his Carey coach, former Kangaroo David King, thinking he was good enough to play for the state. Good mates Jason Ashby (now Essendon) and Kristian Jaksch (GWS) were flying, and Macrae was stranded playing school footy.
He calls it "a building year", one that forged resilience and drove him on. Over the summer between year 11 and 12 he worked with a running coach and sought help with his kicking from former Blue Ian Aitken ("a bit of work on my ball drop, quick release of the footy"). The rewards were immediate.
Four rounds into the 2012 TAC Cup season, Dalrymple's scouts reported that Macrae had just enjoyed the best month of any youngster in Australia. "It was exciting because he was a new player who wasn't even on our talent list at the start of the year, and now he was a definite AFL player."
He was racking up 30-possession games for fun but wouldn't rest; getting drafted had become his top priority. In the first game of the under-18 championships, Vic Metro suffered a shock loss to Northern Territory. Macrae says "they dropped nearly 18 players after that", but he held his spot, was shifted forward in the next game and kicked four in a quarter. "I grew from there."
Now he has played two 30-possession games in the first three rounds of the season. He'd by lying if he said getting heaps of the ball wasn't fun, but insists he knows it's not about the numbers. "There's a lot of steps that go into playing well."
Still, it's impossible not to hear the hype – that among a gifted group, Macrae is shaping as a player who in years to come will be front and centre in the Bulldogs' showroom. His parents pass on snippets of the glowing talk they hear, and Finlay tells him after every game how he went in his fantasy football team. He's learning to treat it as merely more noise.
"I'm not fazed by it, I'm a bit embarrassed by it if anything. What we're building, it's a collective effort."
His mother has long worked with domestic violence cases, another slice of reality Macrae says had a grounding effect on her children. "That's been a big eye-opener, hearing the sort of stuff she deals with daily, that's opened my eyes to how lucky I've been growing up in a fortunate family."
Now he feels blessed to be in the Bulldog family, surrounded by contemporaries who are on the same page, helped by senior players Macrae says "have really bought in to nurturing us, haven't been selfish and looked after themselves". On Saturday GWS awaits, another promising young outfit with a long-range mission of finals and premierships. He embraces this battle and, with Gold Coast too, the many to come.
Former Cat Joel Corey, a similar personality, has been "huge" in teaching him how to build a platform by doing every little thing right. "Any player can have a good game, but the best players do it each week, each week, no matter who the opposition is."
The best players make their self-belief come true.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/jack-macrae-backing-up-his-selfbelief-20140410-zqt6i.html#ixzz2yaEBiCco