Shaun Burgoyne Part 3: Silk’s road from Port hero to three-peat Hawks superstar
AS Shaun Burgoyne prepares to suit up for his 350th AFL game on Saturday night, Reece Homfray wraps up his three-part series by documenting the star’s shift from Port Adelaide to Hawthorn and his big role in Clarko’s historic premiership hat-trick.
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LUKE Hodge doesn’t hesitate when asked to name his favourite ‘Shaun Burgoyne moment’ at Hawthorn — which is not an easy question because there are plenty of them.
“The 2013 prelim,” Hodge replies without even having to think about it.
The Hawks had not beaten Geelong for five years and were 20 points down in the last quarter when Burgoyne kicked the goal to put them in front.
But it was also his tackle on Jimmy Bartel that led to a goal to Brad Hill and his hardball get that led to another to Jack Gunston that got the Hawks home.
Silk’s road from Port Lincoln to 350-game AFL legend: The Shaun Burgoyne story, Part 1
“We hadn’t beaten Geelong for so long and we were struggling to score against them in the third quarter,” Hodge recalled.
“Mitch (Sam Mitchell) had been having a good game but who did he (Alastair Clarkson) go to? He went to Shaun and chucked him in the middle.
“And I just remember that goal when he broke through in the pocket, kicked it and then did the arms wide out ‘look at me, how good am I?’ and that to me sums up Shauny Burgoyne — just a pressure situation, kicks a crucial goal and especially afterwards shows the passion he has for football with his celebration.
“Whenever anyone asks what do you most remember about Shauny, it’s that.”
Clarkson obviously knew he was getting a special player when Burgoyne finally decided on Hawthorn as his new football home in 2009 after 157 games at Port Adelaide.
Shane Crawford’s number nine guernsey had been left vacant for one year after the 2008 grand final triumph and when Clarkson decided it was time to bring it back, there was only one man for it.
“When I spoke to Clarko and said ‘yeah I want to come over’ he said ‘I can see you playing in grand finals in number nine,” Burgoyne said.
“And I said ‘I can see the exact same thing, I’ll take number nine’.
“I was very happy to take the number, with Crawf and Dipper (Robert DiPierdomenico) and Brendan Edwards before him, it was a very prestige number,” he said.
On October 7, 2009, Port Adelaide reached a deal with Hawthorn to send their superstar midfielder to Victoria.
In a four-way deal, the Hawks gave up Pick No. 9 and sent Mark Williams to Essendon, while getting a 26-year-old Burgoyne and also Josh Gibson from North Melbourne. The Power already had Pick No. 8 and took John Butcher, and used Pick No. 9 to draft Andrew Moore.
Burgoyne arrived at Hawthorn on crutches and unable to run while he recovered from knee surgery, and Hodge admitted the jury was out.
“We were waiting to see what we were going to get — was it an old banged up body because the role he played at Port Adelaide was in and under and he got hit a lot? But when he rocked up he was this guy who went on this charge of playing consistent, durable football.”
What’s more, he became the biggest matchwinner Hawthorn had during its incredible run of three premierships from four grand finals and this Saturday at the MCG will run out for the 350th game of his career putting him second to only Adam Goodes (372) for the most games by an indigenous footballer ever.
“He’s got an unbelievable knack of standing up when the team really needs him,” Hodge said.
“When the team’s flying he’s happy just to go along and play his role, but all of a sudden if we were struggling he was the go-to guy.
“We’d chat about it and say ‘what do we do, we need a spark in the backline to get the ball moving?’ ... ‘well let’s chuck Shauny back there’.
“If they’re killing us at clearances, ‘let’s put Shaun in there’ or if we need a goal ‘let’s put him around the ball’, it just became second nature for Hawthorn because he was able to do it so consistently that you didn’t need a phase two — and I guess the phase two was Cyril (Rioli) — but we didn’t seem to get to Cyril because Shauny would do it on his own.
“He loved the responsibility, and a lot of people do that and go against team rules or try to be the hero. Shauny didn’t try to be the hero or go against team rules, it was just a natural ability to be able to control it and take over.”
Burgoyne moved in with Jarryd Roughead when he first got to the Hawks while he waited for his family to move over from Adelaide, and had no idea of how to even get to training.
“I’d never driven around Melbourne other than past the hotel,” Burgoyne said.
“So he (Roughead) was showing me what roads to take, how to beat the traffic, what times to leave, helping me find a place, it just goes to show what type of person he is.
“I’m very close with him and very thankful he was able to help me in that transition period because it was tough coming over as a high-profile recruit on crutches.
“It was a stress that he helped take off my shoulders as well.”
The other big relief was reuniting with Andrew Russell who was his first fitness coach at Port Adelaide.
Russell hadn’t changed but Burgoyne was a new man. Gone was the 18-year-old draftee who couldn’t get through a pre-season training session without vomiting and in was a superstar and one of the most committed and professional footballers in the game.
“There’s a real level of trust between us and that’s because we’ve known each other for a long time, I worked with his brother Peter, got to know his mum and dad and wife Amy well,” Russell said.
“And the trust grew when he came to Hawthorn and Clarko and myself said we’re not going to rush you back from the knee injury, we will just get you right, no matter how long that takes.
“I think he appreciated that as a big-name recruit coming over there’s a tendency to want to prove yourself quickly and on the training track, but we really did go slow in the early days.
“We dropped 4-5kg off his body shape through diet, in the gym and on the track, we really worked to reshape his body and become a more efficient mover so there was less load going through his knee.
“The by-product of that was it helped his movement from a performance point of view out on the field.
“He’s meticulous about his body shape, his skinfolds and body weight now.”
Burgoyne’s game-day routine is legendary. Before every game in Melbourne he’s up early and goes for a walk, then goes to the footy club and has a hot and cold bath and a swim.
“I keep to my routine, I don’t change anything, same time, same place, I like to keep everything the same,” Burgoyne said.
“I listen to the same music before games, it’s worked for so long and if it’s not broke don’t fix it.
“Everyone knows exactly what I like to do and it goes like clockwork now.”
Hodge said Burgoyne hates change.
“For an older guy you love changing it up because you go to the club day in, day out, and changing it up was a spark to get the older guys up and about,” Hodge said.
“But as soon as we’d say ‘there’s a change and we’re going to go to MSAC (Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre) or an undercover basketball court or something like that, you just knew Shauny was going to crack the shits because that wasn’t in his routine.”
For away games he at least goes for a walk and a stretch and when he’s home the only thing that can disrupt his routine is if his boys are playing junior footy that morning.
“I try to get to every single game and sometimes if I have to go to their game and catch an Uber to my game I do, because I want to be as much a part of that as possible,” Burgoyne said.
But if he’s leaving from home he makes a honey sandwich — no butter — a coffee and drives to the ground.
“I eat it at the same time in the same spot in the car,” Burgoyne said.
Is that bordering on obsessive?
“Whether you call that obsessive or just being a professional ... he respects the physical and mental preparation of the game and he executes it daily,” Russell said.
“He knows exactly what he needs to do to get out there to play every week, and he knows what weight he needs to be to play well and will do everything he needs to do.
“His recovery is really good and he’s got a great sense of the intensity he needs to train at both in the pre-season and in between games.
“We modify and change his program regularly for him, if we suggest he trains at a certain intensity he does that, he doesn’t say ‘oh well I’m feeling better I might train a bit higher today’, there is that trust that he will execute what we want.
“He’s a role model definitely, in that he shows that if you want to be good for a long period of time you’ve got to be meticulous.
“He will not do anything that compromises his preparation to train during the week.
“You never see him kicking a soccer ball, throwing a basketball, everything is designed around training and playing with the footy, he doesn’t waste any energy on anything apart from training and playing.
“You might think that’s normal, it’s actually quite unique and rare.”
Burgoyne didn’t play until Round 8 in his first season at Hawthorn but teammate Chance Bateman had seen enough in training to give him a new nickname ‘Silk’ which has stuck.
“When I came across he started singing it out during drills and the boys caught on and it stuck,” Burgoyne said.
“My nickname before that was Shaun, that was as good as it got until Chance started calling me that.”
He missed the first two months of the season but not because of his suspect knees.
“I wanted to play Round 1 but was coming off some rehab in the off-season after knee surgery and the plan was to play at Box Hill then play (AFL) in Round 2,” Burgoyne said.
“But I broke my jaw in the VFL game, I went to pick up a ball and a player ran through and broke my jaw, so mentally that was tough.”
He didn’t have to wait long to come up against his old side and met the Power in his fourth game as a Hawk at the MCG in Round 11 which he won by 11 points.
“It was a bit awkward playing against Port for the first time because you had a lot of close mates there,” he said.
“You spend so much time with them, had some really good bonds, but you still want the win because you have a new set of mates and you’re trying to help them.
“It took the first two or three times against Port to get rid of that awkwardness and play without having to worry about anyone in the opposition.”
Burgoyne joined Hawthorn on an initial three-year deal which took him up to the end of 2012 but he nearly didn’t play in the grand final that season after seriously injuring his ankle in the preliminary final win over Adelaide.
“He had a significant ankle syndesmosis injury that he took into the 2012 grand final and the way he rehabbed out of that was exceptional,” Russell said.
“He hurt it in the prelim final and played with what would have been a 6-8 week injury if it was the middle of the season.
“He did all the basic stuff but also played in pain and a certain level of dysfunction because it was a grand final, then spent the next four or five months after surgery getting back to high-level conditioning again.
“He said ‘I don’t want you to change the parameters you want me to come back at because I can’t run and can’t train, I will just be meticulous with what I eat and drink to make sure I come back in good body shape’.”
True to his word he came back in top condition and played 23 games including the 2013 grand final win over Fremantle which was the start of an historic three-peat for the club and four premierships for him as a player.
“All four have very special meanings to me and not one of the flags means more than any of the others,” Burgoyne said.
“When I think about those games I always think of myself on the field and looking at my teammates’ faces.
“And my last three premierships I had my wife and kids come onto the field to enjoy the moment as well, that makes it even better.”
2013?
“We lost the grand final in 2012 and this year was against Fremantle which was a big task to beat them.”
2014?
“We beat Sydney when Buddy had just gone and I think all three years Fremantle, Sydney and West Coast were favourite.
“So the Sydney grand final was almost the perfect game of football in all aspects of the game for us.”
2015?
“That meant so much as well because we played West Coast in Perth a couple of weeks before and they gave us a flogging.
“Then we had to go back to Perth to play Fremantle to get in the grand final.”
Amazingly in 350 AFL games, Burgoyne has only ever had two senior coaches, Williams and Clarkson, but lists assistants including the late Dean Bailey and Phil Walsh, and Tony McGuinness who he still talks to semi-regularly as those who have shaped his career.
“Two great coaches who will go down in history,” he said of Williams and Clarkson.
“I’ve been super lucky, some players have had seven or eight.
“When I first got to the club Choco used to work me really hard, I thought he didn’t like me at the start, but that was his way of showing affection and getting the most out of me.
“And I was lucky to have Dean Bailey, Phil Walsh, even Alastair Clarkson started there as an assistant coach and all worked me pretty hard.
“Then coming to Hawthorn Clarko has been a mentor for me as well and helped me through the later part of my career.”
Beyond that it’s family and friends who have got him this far. There were about 25 of them in the crowd when Burgoyne played his 300th game in 2016 — which was also against Adelaide at the MCG — and he’s been taking ticket orders for game 350 against the Crows on Saturday night for weeks.
“I’ve enjoyed the longevity in football, I’ve spent nine years at Port and this is nine years at Hawthorn, I didn’t expect to go this long,” Burgoyne said.
“The first half of my career I didn’t have any kids and got to enjoy it with my wife and brother and parents, and the second half I’ve enjoyed it with my four kids as well.
“I’ve been able to create memories with my young family and hopefully my kids can tell their kids and they start a tradition where they go to the footy together and enjoy things.
“Having my kids come to the game and come into the rooms afterwards and chat to the boys in front of their locker, it’s what I will look back on and enjoy the most.”
Both of his boys play footy but has two girls who now can also play and follow in the footsteps of their aunty — Erin Phillips — who won the inaugural AFLW MVP with Adelaide.
“I’m super excited with the girls footy, it’s an unbelievable chance for the girls to have a career path as a professional footy player,” Burgoyne said.
“I’m super excited that my girls can have the same opportunity as my boys.
“If they do decide to play footy I’ll be pumped, if they choose netball I’ll be just as excited, as long as they’re happy.”
reece.homfray@news.com.au
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