Adelaide and Carlton veteran Bryce Gibbs shows what the game means to him as he bows out after 268 games on Sunday
He was all business for 14 years but the tears this week gave a rare glimpse of the person behind the footballer. As he prepares for his 268th and final AFL game, Reece Homfray reflects on the real Bryce Gibbs and the journey he’s taken.
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For 14 years of his AFL career there was a tough exterior to Bryce Gibbs, a mixture of stoic determination and business-like professionalism.
But in 20 minutes on Thursday the wall finally came down and people saw the person, not just the footballer.
His voice quivered as he announced his retirement, and that was after he unashamedly let the tears flow while telling teammates how much he’d miss them and thanking his family for their support.
The tears were significant because they were real and they dispelled a perception that Gibbs - a brilliantly talented footballer yet laconic in nature - was otherwise just going through the motions and collecting a pay cheque this season.
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Because who could really blame him if he was?
Fully fit and healthy and playing for the competition’s bottom side he was picked just twice, in Rounds 1 and 9, and basically told his cards had been marked even though he had over a year left to run on his contract.
His admission on Thursday that until two weeks ago he was still hellbent on breaking back into the Crows’ side, and his subsequent emotions when it dawned on him that it was all over, disproved that theory and showed how much he still cared.
This was Gibbs the person speaking. Not the prodigiously talented 17-year-old who followed in his father Ross’ footsteps by playing senior footy at Glenelg before he was drafted with the No.1 pick in 2006.
From that day on he has been judged, scrutinised, celebrated, criticised, commented on and in the past 12 months had become the weekly topic of conversation every time the Crows’ team was announced.
All the while Gibbs played some outstanding football while fulfilling all of the other obligations that come with the job.
Ask anyone who had anything to do with Gibbs throughout his career and one of the first words they use is professional.
“He just gets it, he gets every aspect of the club, understands everyone’s role and why that contributes to the greater good of the team,” one insider said.
He takes care of his body and is durable, rarely missing a game through injury.
If he was ever angry then you wouldn’t know it. He played in just 15 wins in his last 65 games at the Blues at a time when they really should have been pushing for finals but there was never any bitterness.
There’ve been no social media tirades, no controversies and no unwanted headlines.
Even this year in the most trying of times the closest he came was by Tweeting “Baggers” after a Carlton win.
That was interpreted by some that he didn’t love Adelaide but really just showed that he also still loved the Blues where his name is on the locker and he won a best-and-fairest.
Gibbs also went about it the right way on the field. He was suspended only once in 267 games and even then it was for an overzealous tackle on Robbie Gray, not a cheap shot to the back of an opponent’s head or an unruly raised elbow.
Gibbs is and will be remembered as a ball player because he had eyes only for it and he could find it too.
He had 43 disposals and two goals against Gold Coast one night in 2017 and 45 against West Coast in 2010, and had 30-plus possessions 42 times throughout his career. Possessions aren’t everything of course but they’re a good start.
At the end of 2017 he moved back to Adelaide to be closer to family and also to a premiership, but the second part of that dream got further away through no fault of his own.
Gibbs has found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Adelade had done the deal with Carlton 12 months earlier he probably would have played in their grand final.
Instead he arrived just as the team started to decline and eventually implode, and for the past 18 months has been in and out of the side because Adelaide has so many kids, it is playing them because it either believes they will be good or has to find out.
Gibbs believes he still has some AFL footy left in him but he would not be so out of touch to realise there aren’t many Travis Boak’s out there who grow another leg and hit career-best form after 30.
Footy seems to hold No.1 draft picks to a higher standard than the rest but what defines a successful career anyway?
As much as he might like one, Gibbs doesn’t need a premiership to define his career. In the last 30 years only three No.1 draft picks have won a flag - Luke Hodge, Tom Boyd and Drew Banfield.
Gibbs’ career won’t be defined by premierships or Brownlow Medals, All-Australians or the last two underwhelming years at the Crows.
“I don’t want my career to be justified on how it’s panned out the last two years, I’ve had an amazing career over 14 years and one that I’m very proud of,” he said on Friday.
“I think people lose sight of that at times because it hasn’t panned out the way I thought it would and some others, but I’m certainly very proud of what I’ve achieved and very grateful for being able to live out a childhood dream.”
The childhood dream was born at Brighton High and then at Glenelg Oval which is where I interviewed him for the first time in August, 2007 after his first AFL season with Carlton.
“It’s pretty crazy, it has gone that quick. It only seems like last week I was running around here (Glenelg) and the season has flown by,” he said on a rare trip home.
“I set out to play one game and I’ve been lucky enough to play all of them.”
Fittingly his 268th and final game on Sunday is against Carlton when he will sign off on a career that will be defined in equal parts for its brilliance, determination, professionalism and class.
reece.homfray@news.com.au
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Why Gibbs should never have been a Blue
- Simeon Thomas-Wilson
It is perhaps unfair that Bryce Gibbs’ time at Adelaide will most likely be defined by the trade that got him to the Crows, considering there is still a strong belief that he never should have had to leave South Australia in the first place.
In 2006 then Crows recruiting manager James Fantasia declared Adelaide would never give up on making sure Gibbs played for the Crows – after it was revealed dad Ross fell just nine games short of triggering the father son rule in his playing days for Glenelg.
Fast forward 14-years later and Fantasia is still frustrated at that decision by the AFL to make the qualifying period up until the Crows entered the competition in 1991.
“It was really unfair,” he said.
“The number should have been pushed out to 1995, by the time the club should have gotten its first 100-game player.”
This meant Adelaide never truly got to see the best of Gibbs in the tricolours jumper as the side that should have gone and challenged again for a flag slipped and the former Carlton star suffered as part of this.
Gibbs was solid enough in his first season in Adelaide, coming fourth in the Crows club champion.
But not every player can do a Travis Boak for example and find a new lease on life at 30.
Gibbs in the end was recruited to help a high-flying Crows outfit take the next step and win a flag.
And as the Crows started to falter and fall down the ladder he couldn’t find a niche in Don Pyke’s and then Matthew Nicks’ teams.
It’s a far cry from the coup Adelaide believed it had got when Justin Reid, Brett Burton and Hamish Ogilvie emerged from a North Melbourne cafe in October 2017 with a deal to bring Gibbs back to SA.
The bounty the Crows gave Carlton for Gibbs, the 10th, 16th and 73rd pick in the 2017 draft and a second-round pick in 2018 for the Blues star, pick 77 and Carlton’s 2018 second and third round picks, was a significant one for a then 29-year-old especially after the two clubs could not come to a deal a year prior.
Even on Thursday Gibbs himself said the Crows “gave up a bit” to bring him home.
The players selected with those first round picks, Lochie O’Brien at 10 and Ed Richards by the Western Bulldogs with 16, have not made Adelaide rue letting these picks go and if Gibbs helped the Crows to a first premiership since 1998 then the trade would not be so critically assessed.
But it has become ammunition for critics of the club’s fall from premiership contenders to bottom of the ladder.
Graham Cornes tweeted upon the announcement Gibbs would retire with a year left on his four-year deal: “it shouldn’t have ended like this. But perhaps this is the best outcome for everybody”.
And he has a point.
The settlement for Gibbs will go into Adelaide’s soft cap, an all-important list spot can be freed up and the former Blue and Crow can write some new chapters after a tough 18 months for him mentally.
He said his body feels good, while helping the development of some of Adelaide’s younger players may have ignited the coaching fire in the former No. 1 Draft pick.
But the Crows and their fans will feel like the Bryce Gibbs AFL story should have had a completely different start 14-years-ago.