Lloyd And Clear

The Age

Thursday August 14, 2008

Chloe Saltau

Essendon skipper Matthew Lloyd has been making his presence felt in the AFL for many years, just ask his coach. Chloe Saltau reports.

IT's just as well Matthew Knights doesn't hold a grudge. The man who has helped rejuvenate Matthew Lloyd, and possibly extend his career, apparently has not forgotten the day a young Essendon forward intent on asserting his physical credentials at Princes Park ran through his future coach.

"I left him on the ground, turned to (Richmond opponent Paul) Bulluss and said: 'Every time you touch me, I'm going after one of your teammates'," Lloyd says in an interview of rare insight with his older brother, Simon, for 4Quarters magazine.

Lloyd tells his brother, who is also a sport psychologist and high-performance manager at Collingwood, that he toughened up that day in 1998, and showed the football world he wouldn't be monstered by big, grisly full-backs. Knights simply got in the way.

"I think he does (remember the incident)," said Gary O'Donnell, an assistant to Knights at Windy Hill and former teammate of Lloyd. "He might have mentioned it early in the piece."

O'Donnell recalls that when Lloyd walked into Windy Hill as a 16-year-old he was quiet, modest and eager to learn. Even as he became more physical, this impeccably groomed young man from the western suburbs kept his manners about him.

"He runs into a bloke but does it with a smile on his face almost, a courteous, sorry-about-that type look, and not a hair out of place, either," O'Donnell said.

Lloyd will play his 250th game against Adelaide on Saturday, a milestone that reinforces his reputation as one of the game's champion full-forwards.

Only a couple of months ago, though, the 30-year-old Essendon captain was stressed and more than a little frustrated by critics who questioned his longevity in the game.

"I thought it was blown out of proportion a fair bit, but if your team is losing by 10 goals and you're a high-profile club it's going to happen, and I wasn't playing great," Lloyd said yesterday.

"Every year you have two or three weeks when you're not in great form, but over the course of a season if you work hard enough, I know I'm always going to produce around the 60-goal mark, which is pretty rare for a footballer."

A decade after he was flattened by a young Lloyd, it is well documented that Knights pulled some strings from the coach's box, snipping the invisible cord tying him to full-forward. The Bombers skipper said the move not only relieved some pressure but could help him power on towards 300 games, a milestone that only a few months ago seemed an awfully long way off.

"Endurance-wise, I run fairly well, so it was using an asset that I had probably never used before.

"It's been enjoyable, and it's also about developing (budding forward Jay) Neagle and those types of players," he said.

"In modern football, if you can play two roles it can put another one or two years on your career."

Not even after ripping his hamstring from the bone two years ago did Lloyd question his future, but he is a notoriously tough judge of his own form, and so when things weren't working this season he sought to make his own changes.

"I critique my games with the coaches every week, and there were things, whether it was one-percenters or losing my feet, that I saw happening too often.

"I knew if I could improve those, the rest would take care of itself. The midfield also picked up, which obviously helps you as a forward. That wasn't spoken about that often."

Sure enough, the wheel turned, both for Lloyd and his young, transitional team.

He has 54 goals after 19 rounds, including a bag of eight against Melbourne, and is a leading contender for mark-of-the-year with his classical, leaping mark over the pack against the Demons a fortnight ago.

With 883 career goals (and an accuracy rate of 69%) he is also eighth on the all-time AFL goalkickers list.

In O'Donnell's mind, all those things are a result of his uber-professional approach. "It's why he's been such a good player for so long, but also such a good kick," he said.

"For years and years his percentages of goals to points have been quite high because he's very meticulous, not only in games but in training.

"He doesn't leave any stone unturned. He's got a fierce desire to be a winner, and he has been. Individually he's achieved highly, but also he's been able to achieve the ultimate as a member of one of the better teams that has ever played.

"The game is evolving all the time, and he's proving this year that he is able to evolve with the game."

O'Donnell shared a hotel room with Lloyd for the weekend of the 1996 preliminary final against Sydney, and remembers how his normally clear complexion was green that night after his spleen was ruptured.

Like so many great footballers, though, it is not a fear of physical injury but a fear of failure that has accompanied Lloyd through his 13 years at the top.

In the interview with brother Simon, he describes that fear, the embarrassment he feels after a poor game and how once, when he was 10, he dragged Simon, then 17 and much bigger than him, off the couch and said: "Let's go out on the grass and run at each other and see who is the last man standing."

"My nervous nature and fear of failure are big drivers of my competitiveness," Lloyd tells the magazine.

"But I also respond to my environment, for example, a smack over the head from the full-back or a spray from the coach always revs me up. Also, I really hate getting beaten."

As a 30-year-old with a young daughter, Jaeda, those things still drive him, but so too does the ambition to taste success with the young team that is emerging under Knights.

Speaking to The Age yesterday, he could not say whether he, Scott Lucas (with whom he arrived at Windy Hill all those years ago) and Dustin Fletcher would still be around when the Bombers were next in contention for a flag, but he made his ambitions clear.

"I want to play in a final next year, that's the goal," he said. "It's too hard to predict from there. Geelong, you could say they could win the next three the way they're going."

Earlier, he spoke of Shane Crawford, who played his 300th game in Tasmania last week, another champion rejuvenated by the team that has been built around him.

Lloyd said: "This time next year, if it's going like it is now, I'd say, 'Yeah, I'm ready to go again.'

"I think from the end of next year I will look at it from a year to year basis, but body-wise I'm in pretty good nick, so I don't see why I couldn't (play 300)."

© 2008 The Age

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