If sport’s ultimate promise is to fill you with wonder, then Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell and Nick Riewoldt – all of whom will retire at season’s end – made good on that promise many times over. As too, on occasion, have fellow retirees Matt Priddis, Scott Thompson and Matthew Boyd. In many ways the 2017 season feels like the end of a generation, much as it did 10 years ago when the game bid goodbye to James Hird, Nathan Buckley, Anthony Koutoufides, Mark Ricciuto, Glenn Archer and Chris Grant.
Steve Johnson, who announced his retirement last Thursday, resembles a player from another generation entirely – an old fashioned footballer for which football is enjoyed as a pastime, not practised as a profession. Described by the novelist Anson Cameron as “meow’s last dancer, the gimp-Nureyev from Wang”, Johnson has for 16 years been an incorrigible pest for the coach’s box (and sometimes both of them). Johnson is a footballer who plays by his wits, having never been blessed with great pace – something not helped by the eight operations he had on his ankles in the three years following an incident in late 2003 when, with a few beers rolling through his system, he was locked out of the Torquay pub and tried to find his way back in by jumping off the roof.
Johnson has composed a brilliant career on a crafty set of moves built around cutting the angles in a way that appears vaguely mischievous. And like every great sportsman, he has a signature move – kicking across his body for goal. Johnson plays the way we would all love to play, to be able to kick those goals and to see the ball the way he sees it; it all seems to come naturally. “Stevie J” would be a fascinating case study for those psychologists that believe spontaneity is nothing more than an over-learned skill.
As Johnson is not one to play the percentages, he is often viewed as solipsistic. In his early years at Geelong he clashed with Matthew Scarlett, who thought him to be a very selfish player. But the greater threat to his time at Geelong may have been his impulsiveness off the field. In 2006 Johnson’s career nearly came to an end after a night of Christmas drinks at home in Wangaratta, when he decided to visit an old friend. Unaware his friend had moved, Johnson waited in the backyard and fell asleep only to be woken by police after neighbours had reported an intrusion.
When club captain Tom Harley received word that Johnson had been charged with drink-related offences, the fate of the old-fashioned footballer was in the hands of football’s more contemporary artifice, the leadership group. In Comeback: The Fall and Rise of Geelong, Cameron Mooney tells James Button that it was their first big decision as a leadership group. “A lot of people said enough is enough, it’s mistake after mistake. But the bottom line was, he was a ripping bloke… What happens in 10 or 20 years after we kick him out of the club? Stevie drunk at the end of a bar telling everyone he could have been a champion?”
Like the late Glen Campbell, Johnson would learn about the deals you need to make between your natural instinct and the demands of others to be the artist you want to be: “There’s been a load of compromisin’ on the road to my horizon, but I’m gonna be where the lights are shinin’ on me.” And the lights didn’t shine much brighter than they did on the afternoon of the last Saturday in September in 2007. “I was made to play on days like this,” Johnson told Assistant Coach, Ken Hinkley. “It’s why they put air in my lungs.”
After serving a six-week ban and vowing not to drink until the end of the season, Johnson became an integral part of an imposing Geelong outfit. And while he’d play the team game, Johnson would still find a way to remain a soloist. Even in games he would have classified as ordinary, he did something. But there was nothing ordinary about his game when Geelong broke its 44-year premiership drought. Four goals and a Norm Smith medal is some sort of something – a sense of wonder indeed. Now he could sit at the end of the bar knowing he was a champion.
But you suspect an impressive football resumé will provide little relief to the highly competitive Johnson as Devon Smith and Jeremy Cameron force their way back into the Giants’ line-up. With Brett Deledio now fit, Johnson may be pushed out of the best 22 and denied a chance at a potential fourth premiership. As the broadcaster cues its heartstring-tugging orchestra at the Brownlow medal ceremony to play underneath the highlights of those departing the game, Johnson will be hoping his reel has one game left to run.
On the contrary, you suspect there will be little fuss made of Dennis Armfield’s retirement that night, which is fine. Making a fuss has never really been the point with Carlton’s speedy veteran, who last week slipped relatively quietly into retirement. Although he is not undecorated on Brownlow night – he was recognised for his charity work with the Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award in 2015 – Armfield’s career is not exactly built on critical affirmation. While the talents of the Riewoldts, Hodges and Johnsons will be celebrated by the football world, there is something to be said for the hard-working club cult figure that fans can call their own, particularly when shared venues and carbon-copy, pre-game “entertainment” have seen clubs become more and more homogenised. To quote the comedian Jerry Seinfeld who was in Melbourne last week, kids today are basically barracking for laundry.
Armfield, who grew up playing rugby union at Kalamunda, was a third-round draft pick in 2007. Over the course of 10 years and 143 games he became a navy blue favourite for his relentless running, attack on the ball and Van Dyke beard. But you don’t last 10 years on a list if you can’t play a bit, and last year Armfield kicked back-to-back bags of three goals before rupturing a testicle in round 12. He returned a month later and kicked four goals in what was close to a career-best performance against the Crows at the MCG.
What made Armfield a revered figure at Princes Park, however, was his selfless approach to the game on and off the ground. He was a guy you could count on. The club’s head of football Andrew McKay said Armfield had been a role model for the younger players and his involvement in the club’s AFLW program spoke volumes of his genuine desire to help others. Carlton’s AFLW captain Lauren Arnell told The Guardian that to have a player of Armfield’s experience and standing fully invested in helping the team was critical.
“The hours he would spend with us during and after training were indicative of just how selfless and invested he was, perhaps even to the detriment of his own pre-season,” she said. “The best thing about Dennis is that he’s more than just footy, and is devoted to so many things in his life. Something I’ve learnt from spending time with him is where football sits in life. The philosophy of the club across both the men’s and women’s teams is about what success looks like both on and off the field and Dennis is really reflective of that.”
In his farewell letter to members, Armfield wrote that he would remain devoted to the club. “You can expect this washed-up old footballer to tap you on the shoulder at some stage and ask to join you for a beer at a game! I’m happy to get the first shout!” Perhaps sport’s ultimate promise is not of wonder but of connection. Regardless, it is a promise Armfield has made good on, whether he buys you a beer or not.
