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  1. #1
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    Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Peter Hanlon

    Senior sports writer for The Age


    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.
    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-new...#ixzz2yaEBiCco
    FFC: Established 1883

    Premierships: AFL 1954, 2016 VFA - 1898,99,1900, 1908, 1913, 1919-20, 1923-24, VFL: 2014, 2016 . Champions of Victoria 1924. AFLW - 2018.

  2. #2
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    I thought I would put this up in case posters missed it. Very good article on Jack
    FFC: Established 1883

    Premierships: AFL 1954, 2016 VFA - 1898,99,1900, 1908, 1913, 1919-20, 1923-24, VFL: 2014, 2016 . Champions of Victoria 1924. AFLW - 2018.

  3. #3
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    That was about the best investment of 5 minutes I've made this week. Thanks BAD.
    Rocket Science: the epitaph for the Beveridge era - whenever it ends - reading 'Here lies a team that could beat anyone on its day, but seldom did when it mattered most'. 15/7/2023

  4. #4
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    What a great read. Quality young bloke

  5. #5
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    There's real depth there in that Jack person, our brother, our Bulldog.

  6. #6
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Terrific read.

    We have an absolute gem.
    Life is to be Enjoyed not Endured

  7. #7
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    I said in the three things thread that the class of '12 will eclipse the class of '99 in the end. Reading this makes me confident to have made that call.

  8. #8
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    What a super kid he seems to be. And he can play a bit too.

  9. #9
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Another 30 possession game and he can only get better.
    FFC: Established 1883

    Premierships: AFL 1954, 2016 VFA - 1898,99,1900, 1908, 1913, 1919-20, 1923-24, VFL: 2014, 2016 . Champions of Victoria 1924. AFLW - 2018.

  10. #10
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Gun player and he sounds like a gun kid too

  11. #11
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Is Jack having having one of the best second-seasons on record? (I know it's only early days). 4 games in, averaging 28 touches, 3 tackles and a goal per game.

    Joel Selwood is the only player I can recall doing better in recent years.

  12. #12
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Who would you take in a draft shoot out today, Ward or Jackson ?

  13. #13
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Quote Originally Posted by jazzadogs View Post
    Is Jack having having one of the best second-seasons on record? (I know it's only early days). 4 games in, averaging 28 touches, 3 tackles and a goal per game.

    Joel Selwood is the only player I can recall doing better in recent years.

    Chris Judd's first few seasons were pretty good.
    Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?


    I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite

  14. #14
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    It's funny when a young player gets a couple of nice articles in the press you could almost guarantee a quiet game .
    Not this kid, what a beauty

  15. #15
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    Re: Jack Macrae backing up his self-belief

    Pretty similar article about Jack in the HS



    THE talkback caller had been following the Western Bulldogs for 45 years, which added a fair bit of weight behind his opinion of Jack Macrae.

    “Macrae is as good, maybe a little bit better, than Doug Hawkins at the same age.”

    Out Footscray way, any comparison with Hawkins is as big as it gets. Dougie is royalty at the Whitten Oval and for a second-year player to be mentioned in the same sentence says a lot.

    Macrae is the hottest youngster in the game, averaging 28 possessions in the opening three games of the season and including a match-turning performance against Richmond last week.

    Former North Melbourne premiership star David King coached Macrae at Carey Grammar for two years and he hears the Hawkins comparison and then offers a big one of his own.

    “He is a silent assassin,” King says. “He reminds me a lot of Arch (Glenn Archer), just with the way he is.

    “He is a lovely kid and all that stuff but get him out on the footy field and he wants to hurt you, he wants to kill you and he definitely wants to embarrass people which I think is a great trait.”

    Macrae is a classic cas of “don’t judge a book by its cover”.

    He speaks with a soft voice, his answers are thoughtful and intelligent which makes it hard to believe it’s the same person who the story goes recently ripped through former captain Matthew Boyd on the field for not being accountable.

    “I save my voice for the weekend I guess,” he says.

    He was born in Kew, a mad Hawthorn supporter — he wore Shane Crawford’s number on his back — who didn’t know much about the western suburbs, let alone its football team.

    “Probably my earliest memory was when Brad Johnson was under the speccy from Gary Moorcroft.”

    His obvious maturity for a 19-year-old can be traced back to his upbringing and the extended family in which he was given more responsibility than most teenagers.

    Macrae’s parents divorced when he was three and his older brother, Tom, was six.

    A few years on the family grew with his father, David, who is in the retirement village industry, having two more children, Finlay and Lucia, while his mother had another son, Harrison.

    Macrae dishes off a handball under pressure. Picture: Colleen Petch

    Macrae dishes off a handball under pressure. Picture: Colleen Petch Source: News Corp Australia

    “Having two families has been really great for me,” he says. “Growing up my parents were pretty honest with me and gave me a lot of responsibility for how I wanted to be seen.

    “Footy for me was always my No. 1 priority but having that younger family, having to be more of a role model, made me mature more quickly.

    “When Tom moved to the Gold Coast I was the sole older brother but I have lots of fun with them and it’s good to be looked up to.”

    His junior career wasn’t the smooth sailing you’d expect from a No. 6 draft pick and he battled to get a look-in for representative squads and at TAC Cup level with the Oakleigh Chargers.

    King takes up the story.

    “When I first got there (Carey Grammar) I had to try and talk Oakleigh Chargers into playing him and they wouldn’t play him which was a real frustration for me,” King said.

    “He averaged something like 35 possessions in Year 11 and that just doesn’t happen. Year 11 kids don’t do that, the Year 12s do but the Year 11s just don’t.

    “The endeavour and arrogance he plays with is great. There were a couple of times where he ran the full length of the ground, it was like he was in the Under 9s, he’d baulk someone, run 30m, baulk someone again, run 20m, and then baulk again.”

    Over the summer leading into his final school year, Macrae hired a kicking coach, former Carlton premiership player Ian Aitken, to work on his deficiencies.

    “I did a bit of work on my ball drop and becoming a more damaging kick,” he explains. “In the summer I didn’t really do anything other than footy.

    “Getting drafted was a priority and even though I wasn’t on a lot of clubs radars, I was really keen on getting there.”

    He quickly did that and produced one of the performances of the U/18 championships, kicking four goals in a quarter to turn the game for Vic Metro against Tasmania.

    By the time he led the Chargers to the premiership Macrae was being hailed as top ten material. The Western Bulldogs pounced and also grabbed a schoolmate in Nathan Hrovat at No. 21 in the 2012 draft.

    After 13 games in his debut season, the 191cm Macrae — he has grown 3cm since arriving at the Dogs — spent this summer living out of the pocket of new development coach, Geelong’s three-time premiership hero Joel Corey.

    Corey’s best piece of advice?

    “Any player can have a good game but the best players do it each week, no matter who the opposition is. That’s something I’ve really taken from him.”

    While he is confessed footy head who watches as many games as he can on the weekend, the recent hype about his rise doesn’t register.

    “My little brother likes to tell me after each game how I went in his Supercoach team but I’m not fazed by it all,” he says. “I’m a bit embarrassed by it if anything.

    “I’m not fussed whether it comes or not, I’ve just got to please the coaches and my teammates.”

    Link
    Western Bulldogs: We exist to win premierships

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