Reaching the top and staying there are two very different challenges.
One can be driven by hustle, obsession and short term intensity.
The other requires evolution, resilience and a willingness to challenge long held beliefs.
In this episode of Stay at the Top, I’m joined by Dane Rampe, Sydney Swans captain and one of the AFL’s most respected leaders, for a raw and insightful conversation on longevity, leadership, failure and what it truly takes to sustain elite performance over time.
We unpack Dane’s unconventional path to the AFL, the years of rejection before being drafted, the mindset shifts that extended his career, and the lessons learned from four Grand Final losses.
This is a conversation about performance, but even more so identity, perspective and growth.
In this episode Dane shares:
- Why reaching the top and staying there require different mindsets
- His four year journey of rejection before joining the AFL
- The power of delayed success and compounding habits
- How elite performers evolve as they age
- Why listening to your body matters more than grinding harder
- The metrics that actually matter for performance
- Lessons from four Grand Final losses
- Leadership, pressure and identity
- Why failure can become one of life’s greatest gifts
- What sustainable high performance really looks like
Key Quotes
“Reaching the top, you can get there unsustainably. Staying there requires something different.”
“High performance is such a privilege.”
“What everyone saw was the rise. What they didn’t see was years of flatlining.”
Episode Resources
📖 PRE-ORDER For the Long Run by Jess Spendlove 👉 https://amzn.to/4t33BPh
Dane’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_danerampe/
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Dane
Dane Rampe was denied at several drafts and didn’t land a spot on an AFL list until the age of 22. Rampe made his AFL debut in Round 1 of 2013 and played his 200th match in 2022. He’s an All Australian, an emergency for the greatest NSW team of all time and a Bob Skilton medallist. To top his success, he led the Swans as a co-captain before handing the reigns to Callum Mills in 2024. The defender will play his 14th season for the red and white in 2025 – his experience invaluable to the squad’s up-and-coming stars.
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (00:01.728)
Reaching the top, you can get there with hustle, you can get there with drive, and you can get there generally pretty unsustainably. But to stay there, that really requires something different. It requires a commitment to excellence, a willingness to leave no stone unturned, and a desire to want to have some long-held beliefs you might have challenged.
I’m Jess Spenlove. I work with executives, elite athletes and leaders, which brings us to tonight’s guest, Dane Rampe from the Sydney Swans.
speaker-1 (00:33.134)
High performance is such a privilege. I challenge Jess, I want you to challenge every single long-held belief that I have.
speaker-0 (00:40.322)
Your approach and commitment to self-mastering is another level to even what most elite athletes are. You’re not just going there making the most of that, you’re seeking opportunities outside of that with a desire to want to be better each year.
speaker-1 (00:55.278)
Yeah, it was uncomfortable at first, but I’m so glad I did because ever since I feel like I’m running around with the second wind.
speaker-0 (01:01.294)
Biggest thank you to Dane for his time, energy and vulnerability.
speaker-0 (01:09.122)
Thank you to everyone who’s joining us here tonight. Tonight’s conversation is an insight into not only what it takes to reach the top, but how to stay there. Because there is quite a different distinction. Reaching the top, you you can get there with hustle, you can get there with drive, and you can get there generally pretty unsustainably. But to stay there?
That really requires something different. It requires a commitment to excellence, a willingness to lead no stone unturned, and a desire to want to have some long held beliefs you might have challenged. Hi, I’m Jess Spenlove and I’m a keynote speaker. I’m also a performance dietician and a coach. I work with executives, elite athletes, and leaders, which brings us to tonight’s guest.
Dane Rampe from the Sydney Swans has been kind enough to join us tonight to give us insights into things you might know about him if you’re a Swanies fan, but also plenty of insights into the journey, which is probably something you’re not familiar with. So a big thank you to Dane for joining us here tonight.
speaker-0 (02:30.222)
I guess dive straight into it. Dane, you’re 35 years old. So longevity when we’re talking elite athletes, over 270 games and you know, still in physical and mental peak condition, enough that you’re still running around at the very top. What are your secrets?
speaker-1 (02:50.254)
I hate starting off with a boring answer, but the secret is that there is no secret. I invest more time and energy into my craft, my body, my preparation, my recovery than I ever have in my career. And that just seems to grow year on year. But I think if there was one thing I’d want to leave or share with you guys would be, I think for my… I might be too late now.
I guess, you mentioned. think it’s, guess, guess it’s the frame for me with which I look through what it is I’m doing. And for me, I’m not naive to the fact that high performance is such a privilege and being able to compete and test myself and challenge myself and explore the, I guess, limits of my potential in a high pressure environment is something that I’m not sure I’m going to have access to for a very long, you know, maybe once I’m done fully, I might not have that opportunity again. So.
I guess the lens I look through things now is how can I test myself under the most immense pressure, body, mind, even spiritually? Where can I go? Where can I get my mind and my body to, as I said? you know, having fun with going about that process is probably the secret to, I guess, me sustaining the extra time and the extra energy and the extra effort that’s gone into kind of building about my practice. So I feel like that’s been maybe a shift in perspective that’s helped me stay where I am and keep going.
probably one thing that I’ve seen some of my peers that have in the past maybe retired or been delisted or kind of ended their careers with injury. It’s probably seen them not kind of, I guess, have that outlook.
speaker-0 (04:28.768)
I mean, I think it’s important to call out your philosophy or your commitment. And this really stood out to me when we first met a couple of years ago when we started working together. your approach and commitment to self mastery is another level to even what most elite athletes are. You have this desire to not just go to training. I mean, you’re in an elite environment.
specialists in so many different fields. You’re not just going there making the most of that. You’re seeking opportunities outside of that with a desire to want to be better each year. Where did that come from? Is that just you or is this been something you’ve hired?
speaker-1 (05:11.342)
I think it came from my, I guess the road to me to the AFL, which was probably an untraditional one. Usually you kind of play under 18 state level, under 17, under 18s, and then you get drafted when you’re 18 years old. I missed out on the draft when I was 18. So after missing out on that draft, I made the decision to move from Sydney down to Melbourne and pursue the dream of getting onto an AFL list.
That was probably one of the most challenging journeys of my life. was four years in total and it was just constant and regular setbacks and failures and frustrations and moments of just existential crisis down there. But what I learned through that four years was how to kind of, I guess, observe what was happening to me and then put in,
put in place systems or practices or methods that would make me just a little bit better the next time I went.
speaker-0 (06:17.248)
And how did that go for you? So four years in Melbourne, packed up your life at 18, you know, that’s a big commitment, went down. How did that go for you down there? Did you get picked up in Melbourne or what happened?
speaker-1 (06:29.174)
No, I didn’t. So I went down there quite naively thinking that because a few of my mates from under 18s level had got rookie listed that I could simply just go down there and do it. But it was hard. mean, I went down that year and, you know, things kind of went to plan. I actually played in the reserves for the VFL, which is essentially AFL third grade. And
did well enough to get myself an invite to Western Bulldogs pre-season. And I just thought, you beauty, like everything’s going pretty well on track here. And kind of got talked up and actually promised the rookie was spot by the Bulldogs. But I was sitting, I remember sitting in my car back in the day, it was happening on Twitter. So refreshing the feed and expecting my name to come up. And it was someone else’s name. Such was the cutthroat nature of the industry. And just even though they promised me someone was there that they wasn’t.
weren’t expecting to have. And I remember that just cut me so deep and it was just kind of like, you know, my first real taste of like nearly getting there, but just my first action failure essentially. So that was a consistent theme for the next three years. And it was shattering. mean, I was, I’d become low key obsessed with kind of this mission that I was on. And to the point where I wasn’t going out, I wasn’t doing anything other than
obsessing over my craft and getting better and recovery, my diet, all this sort of stuff. Yeah, I just remember at the end of that four years, just kind of thinking, what the hell have I got to show for this? I guess I became consumed in the identity of being a footballer and it restricted me, it tired me, it actually made me play worse footy by the end of my time. it just got to a stage when I was 22 that I just said, I had to say, know, enough’s enough, maybe it’s…
maybe it’s not meant to be. And, you that was kind of in light of all the things that I mentioned, like this missing out on life. And it was just like, had a moment to myself where I was just like, I can’t keep doing this. I’m gonna need to move on. So that was the journey of Melbourne and it was quite tough. But the reason I kind of mention all those is because I got very good at learning to deal with and work through and face failure. And I feel like that is…
speaker-1 (08:48.748)
almost one of my greatest strengths as a player.
speaker-0 (08:51.202)
And so with that, you made peace with, okay, this is the dream and it might not happen and then move back to Sydney and then that shifted or how did that phase and transition go?
speaker-1 (09:02.102)
Yeah, so it was actually a really important year that one for me because I went back with my tail between my legs, came back to Sydney and was just almost like I felt like I’d been reborn again. You know, it like I could finally live that life that I guess I’d missed out on. I felt like I’d missed out on. And so that year was 2012 and it was one of the greatest years of my life. I guess I released myself of any expectation or responsibility or pressure.
was one of the best things I ever did because I kind of got to enjoy playing footy again for like the real reasons, which is to play with your mates, to have fun, to just go out there and exercise and stuff around and be silly really. And it was just a reminder of how hard, how sometimes you can just get so consumed by things. And it wasn’t until that year and I got invited by the Swans to do a pre-season. And to be honest, at the start I actually said no, because I just, didn’t want to like,
I didn’t want the carrot dangled again. I was scared of going back there. But again, I had some great mentors and friends that kind of suggested I do. And again, it was obviously a great decision, knowing what we know now. But it’s an important balance to have. I can get caught up in it, but it’s also really important to remember to stay true to yourself and to have outlets outside as well.
speaker-0 (10:22.616)
And I know like conversations we’ve had are around, you know, the doing the reps and sets in whatever way, or form, and then how they then compound over time. So four years of pushing, obsessive, all of the complete focus on this, pressure valve released, enjoying it. Technically your fifth pre-season, you get picked up and then talk about the next few years because then what happened from there is pretty incredible.
speaker-1 (10:51.598)
Next few years was a bit of a whirlwind to be honest. I played my first, I debuted my first game in 2013, the start of the season. I actually got dropped after that first game because I cramped in the second quarter. That was kind of the only blip that I had and then I was out of the team one week and then I came back in the next week and pretty much didn’t miss a game for 100 games.
speaker-0 (11:05.006)
Pickle juice.
speaker-1 (11:21.484)
or four years and in that four years we played in two grand finals. I became a member of the leadership group and then probably on the fifth year I became actually a captain and all Australian. It was an incredible kind of four years but I think what was significant because I remember hearing people talk a lot about how quickly it all happened and with relation to what you said about just getting the reps in doing the work.
I remember thinking, hearing that, that it’s been like a whirlwind few years for you. It’s like, I can’t believe how quick this is all happening. Like, look what you’ve gone through for this first four or five years in the AFL. And I remember thinking this has been a 12 year journey. Yeah, I appreciate that. And it does probably seem like that from the outside, but this has been the result of just like obsessive habits and stacking them day on day, making deposits day on day. And the way I like to kind of describe it is like a
compounding interest chart. It’s just kind of everyone say everyone what everyone saw was like the rise of the exponential kind of graph. But what no one saw was the five or six years of hell where I was giving everything and there was just absolute minimum. It was actually going, it was actually flatlining at the start. And that’s, I guess that’s something I’m really proud of.
speaker-0 (12:34.988)
Yeah, how long are you willing to endure that? The kind of classic overnight success, which is never an overnight success. The tip of the iceberg that everyone sees and the under the surface and the years and all the decades. You know, not to fast forward too much because obviously we’ll jump around and we do definitely want to talk about the challenges and the failures that you’ve navigated. But fast forwarding to now. So this is about to be a 14th.
Technically 14th pre-season, is that right? But now hearing this kind of your 18th, which is half your life. An AFL pre-season, I mean, I was fortunate other than the private work I do with a few athletes like Dane was with the Giants for eight years. And I’ve been behind the scenes on nearly every professional sport. Seeing the first pre-season and being behind the scenes and now that the work that we’ve done and with Errol and a few different people, they are brutal.
speaker-1 (13:09.292)
Yeah, it’s a long time.
speaker-0 (13:31.884)
The running is, you know, the endurance, 30 % of the game time is sprinting. What they’re lifting in the gym is pretty close to the rugby league and the rugby union athletes. And then there’s all the pilates and gymnastics, and there’s just so much that goes into an AFL pre-season. So you’re about to do your 18th, you’ve played over 270 games. What have you adapted over that time? know you’ve talked about like stacking and adding, but you know.
As the saying goes, what got you here won’t get you there. So what has evolved with you as the years have gone on?
speaker-1 (14:07.758)
That’s a great question. I think the respect to which I listen to my body and my mind, what I mean by that is when I first started, as I’ve kind of explained, I was obsessed and it was just like more effort, harder effort, like intensity, just load, just like kind of grind your way to getting there. I’ve had to learn to work smarter, not harder. And that doesn’t mean that I’m doing any less in terms of committing time and energy. It just means that it looks different and it’s looking, as I said,
I’ve learned to listen to my body and what I mean by that is if I’m feeling tired or I’m not feeling motivated when I rock up to training, that’s to me a sign that I’m a little bit tired or I might be close to burnout. And trusting that to go, you know, and not being, I used to be really hard on myself. It was kind of like, be weak. Don’t shut like this, you just need to push through this. That works if you’re trying to grind out something really long, but in terms of performance.
and sustaining optimal performance over the course of the season. Listening to these little micro-signs from your body is something that I’m kind of learning, still learning. It’s a constant battle because I feel like I’ve been hardwired in this one way. Listening to little signs from your body and your mind, that’s to me a sign that mentally I’m obviously not at an optimal state. So I’ll go and do things that, invest my time and energy to, I guess, meditation or some more journaling or maybe just going and sitting
the base looking out the water for an hour because I feel like that’s what I need.
speaker-0 (15:40.706)
I mean, it’s great to hear you sit there and have that reflection because like something I know about you, were dialed in and you’ve done the work to learn that language of your body. And even that was a conversation around some of the work we did together. know, football or any sport or people in general, there can be a big focus on, you know, the metrics, what we think matter, like our weight or our body fat or our muscle mass. We’re in the…
the information economy right now and there’s so much information out there and it can be really easy to focus on that outcome. And a conversation that we had was around, okay, what are the metrics that matter? Energy and not just physical energy, but physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. But energy, appetite and a cravings piece and also performance and shifting focus to that and…
using that as a bit of a guide in terms of dictating, okay, well, if this is shift, how is that working for you? As opposed to just going, I play it this way, I need this skin fold, this is what we need to hit. Can you share a little bit about that process and what that may be uncovered for you?
speaker-1 (16:50.926)
Yeah, well, I think going back to what I mentioned about the foundational kind of things, know, sleep, diet, and I’d say probably social is third to that. My work, just for context, I sought out Jess probably three years ago now, two or three years ago now. And it was a year after I had picked up the book called Breath. I’m not sure if anyone’s read that or is familiar with it. It’s by James Nestor.
I luckily picked it up one day at a friend’s house, friend’s grandparents house, and I just kind of turned it, I opened it up and just kept turning the pages. I was amazed. I was obviously incredibly intrigued, but also amazed that the fact that for such a foundational part of what we do, I’ve certainly had never been taught how to breathe properly. And so just for my own curiosity,
I implemented some of the things that we talked about in the book and I felt like I got a 10 to 15 % improvement just from the stuff that he speaks about in the book. And again, that was probably another light bulb moment for me because I was at that stage 32, was coming into the latter part of my career and up until that stage I’d always been reaching for the 1 % gain and it’s probably the 1 % gains that we all say on.
Facebook or TikTok or hear podcasters talk about, you it might be an ice bath for this long and then sauna for this long. And, you know, he’s kind of just craving that kind of that sugar hit, I think. And what this book did for me in this experience was make me really question and revisit the foundational things that you probably take for granted and never really questioned. And I remember just thinking, wow, what else am I? What else do I not know?
So the context for reaching out for Jess was to go, all right, I’ve done my breath. the process of that, kind of, I’ve pretty much felt like I’ve mastered or nailed my sleep all in the one year. And that was, they were probably, they were probably wanting the same thing. And I was like, next year, I’m going to seek out Jess. Cause I have my teammate, Errol Gordon, which I’m sure you all know, that sorted out and, you know, spoke very highly of it. Anyway.
speaker-1 (19:19.456)
I asked Jess our first session and I said, I’ve been doing this for a long time in dealing with dealing with people and I’m glad Jess you aren’t one of these people but sometimes people can not get intimidated but they think this guy knows what he’s doing he doesn’t want to kind of I don’t want to tread on his toes so they kind of give you a this might be good if you if you can you know this might be ideal but you know only if you feel it’s necessary it’s like I challenge Jess and I’m not sure what the words were but I can distinctly remember the
I guess the intent behind it was just like, want you to challenge every single long held belief about diet that I have. Because my experience through this kind of process of learning about my breath changed my life. And in terms of like what it opened for me, the potential I felt like it unlocked in me. And I asked Jess to do that. I was pretty direct and…
speaker-0 (20:11.086)
I that.
speaker-1 (20:13.238)
I was pretty direct, but yeah, what guess what Jess gave me back in return was some stuff that stopped me in my tracks. And we’ve kind of rounded away the long way back to your original question, which was up until that stage, I’d spent so much of my time and pretty much my whole career obsessively focused on my what Jess calls body composition. So that what that means is your weight, what you look like.
your skin folds, all those sort of anything else. But the institution drives that, you also drive that like yourself, because when you rock up first, I’m going back to preseason next Monday. And I guarantee you the first thing they’ll be saying won’t be about, you know, without us even having run a lap or kick the footy. he’s been a good paddock or he’s looking he’s looking like he’s meant business. You know, just this little comments like that, but they’re not actually they don’t mean anything but the psyche over the course of
speaker-0 (20:47.086)
institution kind of drives.
speaker-1 (21:11.948)
your career changes. It’s crazy. Yeah, I know you laugh, but it’s dead serious. then so subconsciously you’re taught that this is what matters. I kind of knew my weight was another one. So in terms of I came to Jess, I like, I play at 89 kilos. And that’s where I feel I’ve got the perfect balance of strength plus agility for smaller players. I can do everything. And I remember this hit me.
hit me right between the eyes, this is exactly what I needed. But she’s like, you’re so obsessed with your body composition. What if all of this comes at the expense of your performance, comes at the expense of your energy and comes at the expense of your appetite and hunger levels? And I was like, fuck. And I was like, huh. She’s like, if I could told you, could play at 92 kilos or had to play at 92 kilos, but
you felt 10 out of 10 every game, would you do it? I was like, absolutely. If you told me like, you feel you bounce out of bed every morning and then in the afternoon you don’t have an energy low and you don’t feel like you need to have a nap or whatever, but you’ve had to play at 93 kilos, would you do it? Absolutely. And so it was just that simple shift of Jess’s, what do call them? The full metrics. Yeah, the metrics that matter was.
speaker-0 (22:31.522)
the metrics that matter.
speaker-1 (22:36.194)
was probably the first challenge, the belief that she challenged that was just like, you know, and I felt almost embarrassed to be saying this because I spent 10 years of my career worried about what I looked like on day one. That was an example of probably, that was the most obvious one that comes to mind and something that, yeah, it was uncomfortable at first, but I’m so glad I did because ever since I feel like I, yeah, I feel like I’m running around with the second wind all the time now. You know when you have those moments in workouts and you’re like,
I’m feeling really good right now. Like thanks to Jess and kind of the work we’ve done. It’s like, I feel like that when I run around every time now.
speaker-0 (23:12.43)
I guess let’s kind of, know, fast forward to now. Like we kind of said, know, 18 years of this, like more than half your life. How do you approach the physical and the mental demands now compared to earlier on in your career?
speaker-1 (23:29.548)
what it is I truly need. I mentioned before about listening to my body and my mind a lot more than I used to. And I feel like that’s the lens through which I judge, not success, like kind of what I’m trying to get out of, know, performing in terms of the mental capacity, performing physically, performing emotionally, spiritually, whatever, is it’s just a curiosity in me that I feel
is constantly getting itched. And I feel like that for me is really fun. And that is, I think, how I stay. I’m not sure if I answered the question right, but I feel like that’s how I stay on top of my performance in all those aspects, because I’m constantly finding new ways to explore it. And it’s not, it hasn’t become rigid. It was probably very rigid early on with my time in Melbourne and when I started.
but I’ve learned to like flow with it and explore it and ride the wave. And I find that journey incredibly satisfying and rewarding and insightful as well.
speaker-0 (24:39.65)
Yeah, amazing. Sounds like bit of like zooming out to actually kind of zoom in. Parallels with business and sport, because I think, you know, the what underpins an elite performer, anyone excelling in industry, there’s a lot of common threads and a mindset. What parallels do you see with business and sport?
speaker-1 (24:57.646)
With these sort of questions, feel regardless of whether it’s sport, business, arts, creative pursuits, it’s just all high performance at the end of the day. And the one thing we do share is they’re all humans just in high performance and we all have the same fears, we all have the same desires in terms of that space. We want what’s best for ourselves. want to, well, hopefully most of us in this space want to maximize your potential and unlock everything you can. I find the best way to look at these things is it’s just such a,
High performance provides such a great platform for you to explore yourself. And what I’m in a physical and a mental, I’ve mentioned these things a number of times, but what high performance does is allows you a space where you can put under the microscope where you go under pressure, where you go when you’re at your best, when you’ve had your most success, when you dealt with your most devastating failures. And I feel…
what relates or what you can transition is there is an opportunity there regardless of the industry you’re in or the space that you’re in to really learn at the very pointy end about yourself and who you are and what you stand for. I think that’s why I love exploring that space.
speaker-0 (26:18.602)
Something you touched on I know we wanted to talk about and I think it’s important and people might have the question. You’ve been to the last dance four times, the grand final, and you haven’t lifted the trophy. What is your relationship with failure been like both personally and professionally and what have you learned to navigate that?
speaker-1 (26:41.71)
Yeah, it’s a good question. Thanks for reminding me. No, it’s true. Let’s talk about the most recent one. Why don’t we, I think it’s important, like, because the most recent one, I’m not sure if you know, but like, I’ve lost four grand finals in my career. The last two I’ve been captain and the last two have been by 80 points plus. So to say that I went through it after both of them was, is probably an understatement. Professionally, we’ll start professionally.
What have I learned? I’ve the importance of, and this has probably become apparent from this last one that I’ve just experienced, the importance of objectively reviewing every failure and success, regardless of how you’re feeling, or maybe when the dust has settled. But doing that no matter what, I feel like is the most important thing to help you grow and learn. And the reason I say that is because
After 22, when we probably had overachieved in 2022 when we played Geelong in the Grand Final, in hindsight, regretfully, kind of brushed over the review because we felt like we’d overachieved and it was just like, we’d spend ourselves the week before and we had a great year and we will be better for next year. It came back to bite us big time. Personally, I was devastated with my performance in 2022.
So like when the pressure was on and we were under the pump, what the game demanded was we needed some, you know, particularly from the defenders, needed some more run off the half back line. When it was coming in, I needed to take a more proactive approach in front of my opponent. And we needed a bit more fight and, you know, I guess aggression in the contest. Because I didn’t review, that was my lasting memory of that grand final. And that was what I beat myself up about because I knew, I heard some comments. I probably felt that at the time.
Going into 2024, that was what was driving me, was when the pressure comes on, I’m going to run off half back, I’m going to stand in front and I’m going to show some fight here for my teammates because I’m not letting that ever happen again. Sounds pretty good, right? Like that’s a pretty good thing to like, you know, focus on. It was pretty good until when the pressure came on in the Brisbane game and it was a completely different set of circumstances.
speaker-1 (29:11.178)
in one in which that I had premeditated that this is what I was going to do when the pressure was on, as opposed to reading and being present with the game and truly understanding what was required. And that’s what that’s what still kind of hurts me to think about and to to acknowledge, because I’ve probably broken my number one rule from all the failures I’ve learned from in Melbourne, which was review honestly, have, you know, just radical transparency with yourself and with others.
And I’d let myself, I felt like I’d let myself and the club down because we kind of was like, we gave ourselves a pat on the back in 22 and probably hadn’t really addressed it. As a team, it was probably the same. You know, everyone else had similar things, but again, Geelong kind of bashed us in that first quarter. We got really shocked and we looked like a bunch of boys against men. So again.
Because I felt like because we hadn’t reviewed it objectively once the emotions had settled, because we’d probably taken the easy way out, we went in thinking that if we nail this first quarter and come out with physicality and aggression, that’s going to hit them in between the eyes, just like it did us. Well, we were completely wrong because Brisbane had a much more experienced team. Their average age was five years older than the average age of our team when we played two years before.
And so something like that didn’t rattle them. They knew how to accept, they knew how to withhold that, to kind of look it in the face and throw a counter punch. And then what it did for us was it exhausted us. So we were in the game for the first 30 minutes, probably the first 10 minutes of the second quarter. And in the review of this last one, everyone just said, I was just exhausted. Like we’d been wrestling, we’d been throwing our energy all in these wrong places. And that is…
That’s why we had nothing left in the tank and Brisbane just went, thank you and see you later. Within 20 minutes, the game was gone just before halftime.
speaker-1 (31:17.26)
So that was like a pretty powerful and unforgettable lesson. I felt like I’d learnt it enough times to have known it, but it still frustrates me that like I hadn’t learnt that and that I had to wait again. But I feel like the universe, unless you keep giving these opportunities to kind of right your wrongs or to show you if you’ve learnt your lessons. And so that was professionally. Sorry, I know we’re running out a little bit of time, but.
I guess personally, particularly the last couple of Grand Finals, think, and in terms of like leadership, that’s what probably killed me the most or hurt me the most was the I felt responsible. I remember part of the race, not the whole reason, but part of the reason horse like our coach kind of left after that. And he was I know he was feeling the frustrations of the losses and taking it personally and kind of in conversations with us as captains and leaders. He blamed himself.
And I remember just thinking like, mate, what an arrogant prick, like how dare you think that like that’s all on you? And, you know, I thought it was quite selfish and like almost the height of arrogance for him to be like that was on him because like, what about us? But then as I’d said that, and I was complaining to someone about that on the car on the way home, I just realized that that’s exactly what I’d been doing, is beating myself up relentlessly on all these little things that I felt like I could have
Influence but at the end of the day I had absolutely no control over and I think the reality is so what that taught me on getting to is that this as a leader there was those parts that I had to let go and let go of control and that was really hard because I felt like if everything is in my control then I’m at my best but by trying to control everything and it seemed like it must have been a top-down thing because horse had done it I’ve done it and few of us other leaders were probably in that space we didn’t give any of other boys a chance to kind of
be resourceful themselves and kind of learn what they need to and just play footy, which is what we’ve done the whole season leading up to that. So that was a really profound one. Flip it on its head. I had one of the toughest periods of my career and personal life after that grand final. And I was in the dumps. Like I was depressed. was staring at the TV for hours a day. Like on Mad Monday, Callum Mills, was the other captain at the time.
speaker-1 (33:44.652)
told me I needed to go home because I was ruining the vibe. I was taking it personally. I was just, because I’d been there for four of them. And you know, a lot of the boys had only been there for two. And I was just like, you know, am I going to get there again? Is there any opportunity? What I realised through all that and through coming out the back end of that few months was I had a mate, Higgie used to play and we were chatting about it. he said, he told me that he would have given anything to be out there. And I was like, mate, why would you do that?
was a really powerful conversation I’ll never forget. He said, because being out there and losing like that is better than not being out there at all. And then we kind of got into a conversation about the beauty that is in falling flat on your face after having given everything. I felt like I was embarrassed in front of 100,000 people at the game.
All of Sydney was behind us that week in the final series leading up. I got stopped on the way to my car. got like I felt I never really get noticed in Sydney or no one ever says anything but I felt like Sydney and New South Wales is behind us and I felt like embarrassed for that. I didn’t want to like show my face in public but like, you know, it’s fine. I appreciate the sympathy but like that’s the space I was in but to but what I’ve learned is to be able to feel that and to be able to go to such depths in terms of what we say like negative emotions.
It’s just the different side of the exact same coin and that it is such a privilege to be able to be in that position to experience. I didn’t get to experience, I haven’t got to experience the highs yet, but I’ve got to experience lows that no one I think in my network will ever be able to experience. through that conversation, just remember just feeling an amazing amount of gratitude and love for what had happened and kind of the journey that it’s taken me on.
I think most powerfully is that last failure, particularly being so public and having, I guess, tried a number of times and gone through, you know, as captain, as the forefront of what I felt was the face of it all. What I learned was that I’m fundamentally going to be absolutely okay and that it passes. And I think up until that stage in life, I was always a little bit fearful of these…
speaker-1 (36:01.92)
of failing the really big things that matter. You know, it’s like I can lose a game, can have an opponent kick eight goals on me and I can move on. But like the stuff where you’re really putting yourself out there, such as on Grand Final Day and saying that everyone we have prepared, I remember saying in the lead up that we have prepared as perfectly as we could have. I think going forward, the lesson that’s taught me is that there is absolutely nothing to fear in failure. And for me, that was a really profound lesson because I feel like
you know, while I haven’t achieved what I need to professionally, this is something that’s going to transcend football and help me so much more in life. Because I truly feel that now I know that no matter what I go for when I’m done, whenever I try and do whatever business I try and run, whatever great things I want to achieve, I can go for it and know that I’m fundamentally not going to be broken by it. And that’s something that used to scare me. Like where I’d go mentally, would I be able to handle it?
would I be one of those guys that’s thinking about not having won a grand final for their whole careers? Like, I know some people in the media do think that way and they kind of let it define them. Having experienced that and come out the other side was like a really powerful lesson that’s probably been the best thing that’s actually ever happened to me. So just wanted to finish on that positive note, even though it’s pretty grim there for a bit.
speaker-0 (37:22.048)
I mean, thank you for the honesty and wanting to go there. You know, he gave me the permission to ask that question. I don’t know if I would have lent in otherwise. So thanks for coming and yeah, hope you found a lot of value or interest and of course the biggest thank you to Dane for his time, energy and vulnerability. So yeah, big thank you.