Kieren’s blog
By Kieren Jack
When I first started at the Swans I was pretty lucky – I had mentors like Brett Kirk, Jared Crouch and Luke Ablett and those sorts of players who you feel comfortable going up and just having a chat with them and they’re not a coach.
A strength of our football club is that we have a mentor system where 10 or 12 of the senior players are assigned one or two younger players at the club. It’s just more a casual thing where it’s generally catching up and seeing how they’re going but on a more personal level.
Whereas the coaches will be more telling them structures and game-plan things, with us it’s just making sure that their head’s in the right space and they’re feeling ok and things are going well on and off the field for them.
Sometimes when you’re 18, as much as it shouldn’t be, it can be a little bit daunting going up and talking to the senior coaches and seeing what you need to improve on but you feel comfortable going up to a senior player and talking to them about it. That’s probably the environment we want to create at the club, the young boys coming up and asking the older players what they need to work on.
For the younger boys, I want to just provide a good example for them – on the field, off the field, teach them the right habits and hopefully they come to the club and look at players like myself to see where they need to get to. That’s probably the most important thing in terms of leadership, that your leaders are doing the right things and providing the right examples for everyone.
We get 17, 18, 19 year-old kids straight up here that are away from home, they’re living in a house with a couple of other teammates, it’s very different for them.
I mentor Jake Lloyd at the moment – every now and then I just chat with him and see what the coaches are asking him to do, see how he’s feeling, see how he’s going and just be that bigger brother figure and show them what to do and what they need to improve on. I also mentor Lewis Jetta as well who I’ve mentored for a couple of years now.
I think the senior players or the older players at the club, they know what to do and they’ve been around the system and know what’s required. The senior players, they’re there for a reason, they’ve done it consistently year-in year-out. With the older players it’s more just chatting about how the things are going on the field, what we think we can improve on as a group, how can we get the weight of numbers more in our favour or how can we get the next group of leaders coming through.
With the younger guys it is more of a mentoring thing and sometimes they do need to be told and they do need to be pulled into line and that comes with the job of being a leader and whatnot but you’d hope the majority of the time they are buying in and they’re really following what the other players are doing.
My younger brother Brandon plays at the club and it was very special telling him that he was going to make his debut. The thing was he earned it; I didn’t have to say much at match committee at all. They asked my opinion of whether I thought he could handle it and the overriding thing was he earned that position to be called in.
It was a fantastic honour for him to be able to do that and to be able to sit in a room with John and let him know he was going to play his first game and see how happy he was, that was a very special moment and I’ve been lucky this year that I’ve been able to say that to a number of players.
I sat in when Tom Mitchell was told he would make his debut and it’s great to be able to give these opportunities to young kids that are really embracing the club and embracing the behaviours that we’re talking about to play their first game for the Swans.
I was immensely proud of the side last Friday night. It’s well documented that our injury list is quite large at the moment and there’s always that uncertainty when you bring young players in, how they’re going to react and respond and how they’re going to go. Our younger players were immense on Friday and did what they had to do and they all played a part in the win.
When you’re an experienced group and you’re able to bring in four or five young players and experience that together, I think it creates a really positive environment. Everyone’s really enthusiastic, there are young boys in the team playing their first game and it gets the older players up and about.