Jim Stynes is well known – particularly in Southern Australia’s Australian Football League heartland – for four things:

1. He was the Irish boy who made good in the AFL (winning, among other honours, the 1991 Brownlow Medal); and

2. He probably played more games straight (170+) than any other current player, but

3. He may have robbed Melbourne’s chances of a berth in the ’87 Grand Final by running across the mark in the final minute of the preliminary final. Result: Hawthorn’s Gary Buckenara was awarded a fifteen metre penalty, from which he scored the winning points; and

4. Jim announced to an astonished Footy Show/TV audience that he was a virgin (he doesn’t mention that in his book). But, then, one his heroes is Buckminster Fuller, and his famous quote ‘Integrity is the essence of everything’ is there before chapter one starts…

In fact, the book is liberally sprinkled with quotes from well-known authors and motivational speakers. ‘The quality of your life is a full measure of your personal commitment to excellence and to victory, regardless of what field you’re in’ (Vince Lombardi). ‘Ideals are like the stars; you will not succeed in reaching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny’ (Carl Schurz). ‘Love is the most important ingredient of success. Without it our life echoes emptiness. With it, our life vibrates warmth and meaning’ (Wynn Davis). Stynes wants us to learn just two things from his book: ‘failure is never final,’ and ‘it’s not what life does to you but what you do to life that counts’.

Back to that ‘ghastly’ finals moment. What do you do with the sense of humiliation and failure after something like that? First, you ensure that you have a supportive family and friends. And you get away from the media: Stynes went on a holiday in Europe. Third, you meet a stranger in a train in Paris who says: ‘You’re the guy who ran across the mark in that Finals match aren’t you?’ Then you miss a plane at Heathrow and talk to yourself.

Listen to a brilliant bit of self-talk: ‘There was no running, no hiding from the mistake I had made against Hawthorn. I could not blame it on this or that. I could not blame it on the umpire, or on my teammates, or that the siren was not loud enough. It was _my_ fault, _my_ mistake. And I had to take responsibility for it. So many things flashed through my mind, but the inescapable message was that there must be a reason why this had happened to me. I knew there was no such thing as coincidence and that everything happens for a reason. I just had to figure out – why?’ (p.139). Later, he writes: ‘Why did I [succeed in getting a Brownlow medal]? It all came down to my running across the mark in the 1987 Preliminary Final against Hawthorn. If I had not given Gary Buckenara that 15-metre penalty my attitude would not have been what it was in subsequent seasons. I would not have made the most of a rare opportunity to play Australian football at the highest level’ (p.180).

Two qualities emerged from that experience: humility and determination. No one really succeeds at anything much without those qualities. From his coach John Northey he also learned that you take every match in the season minute by minute, contest by contest. ‘You had to forget the past and ignore what might happen in the future; everything was in the present. Forget the result. If you work in the present and do everything you can, the result always takes care of itself’ (p.149)

Attitude, says Stynes is ‘tremendously important in chasing success – in any field of endeavour. That’s why I believe talent alone will get you very little in this world’ (p.150).

Back to the supportive family. When Stynes, without a steady girlfriend, had to think of someone to take to the Brownlow Medal dinner as partner, who did he invite? His dad! I’d be interested to know whether anyone else in Brownlow Medal history has done that. Stynes had a dad who encouraged him, coached and roared at him on the soccer/Gaelic football field, and who believed in him. And, as Stynes quotes Robert Frost as sayings in another context, that made all the difference. Moral: if you want to bounce back from failure, find a purpose in life based on parental-type love. And if, as the Australian men’s movement Steve Biddulph says, dad is working more than fifty hours a week at his job, he’ll not be able to raise sons properly. Stynes’ book is a good commentary on that wisdom.

Jim Stynes, a qualified teacher, now runs – with other well-known athletes – a ‘Reach for the Stars’ program for kids. Terrific.

Finally, something in the ‘Did you know?’ category: ‘The practice of awarding losers’ medals was abandoned after the Grand Final in which Collingwood’s Peter Moore threw his medal away in disgust.’ And something to ponder on: our culture doesn’t do a good job of preparing people for devastating experiences, does it?

Rowland Croucher.