Silk’s road from Port Lincoln to 350-game AFL legend: The Shaun Burgoyne story, Part 1
SHAUN Burgoyne will suit up for his 350th AFL game when Hawthorn takes on Adelaide on Saturday night. In Part 1 of a three-part series, Reece Homfray documents his journey from Mallee Park to the MCG and four premierships.
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SHAUN Burgoyne is driving to the football on Easter Monday with his wife, four kids and father-in-law Greg Phillips all in the car when the questions start.
“This happens every time we’re going to the football,” Phillips said.
“Shaun says to Amy ‘have you got my life member’s ticket for your dad? Have you got all your tickets? Have you got your passes to get into the rooms after the game? Have you got the kids lunch for the creche? Have you got the jumpers for the kids?’.
“He makes sure everything is spot on, he’s always got the checklist out and makes sure everyone is right and ready to go.
“He is so organised. The first time we went over to Melbourne Amy goes ‘Dad, now look, if the game’s at 4pm or whatever and Shaun says we’re leaving at 12.30pm, we are leaving at 12.30pm’.
“She said ‘if you’re having a beer across the road with the neighbour or whoever — because I know a few people in Melbourne — and you’re one minute late, you’ll be getting the train’.
“So I made sure I was ready to go 10 minutes before that and standing around waiting.
“And from day one before every game he makes himself a coffee and a honey sandwich, no butter just bread and honey, then wraps it up and puts it in his bag and when he’s ready we head out and get in the car.
“Then as we’re going along he has his coffee and his honey sandwich, I’m in the front and Amy is in the back with the kids.”
As they drive towards the MCG for the annual blockbuster against Geelong, Phillips wonders is this the same shy and softly spoken kid he first met as a 15-year-old when he started dating his daughter Amy at Seaton High School.
“I reckon Amy used to do his homework sometimes,” Phillips says with a laugh.
“He’d come around home and I don’t think he realised how big I was,” he adds with an even bigger laugh.
“I’ve seen him grow not only into a good dad but a very professional sportsperson.”
Professional footballer, four-time premiership player, All-Australian and at the MCG on Saturday night, 350-game player putting him second only to Adam Goodes (372) for most games by an indigenous player ever.
But the journey started a long way from the most famous football ground in the land. It was 1300km away at Mallee Park in Port Lincoln.
Burgoyne has a video in his TV cabinet at home that’s almost 25 years old and every now and then he puts it on for old time’s sake.
It takes him back to 1994 when he was 11 going on 12, described by his first coach as a “bony little rake”, and running around with big brother Peter and Byron Pickett for Mallee Park in the under-17 grand final which they won.
Incredibly 10 years later almost to the day, the three of them would do it all again only this time on the MCG with Port Adelaide.
“He was only a little shorty, he was on and off the bench and played in the pocket but somehow he could always find the ball,” Pickett recalled.
Burgoyne has never forgotten where he came from and that grand final at Mallee Park is why he likes to think of himself as a five-time premiership player, to go with one at Port Adelaide and three with Hawthorn.
“All grand finals stick in your memory and this one does,” Burgoyne said.
“I’ve got that game on tape and I still watch it, I’ve watched it a few times actually.
“It means a huge amount to me and when I go back to Lincoln someone always gets the photos out.”
Burgoyne has been a model of consistency, durability and class throughout his career. But it has been his ability to deliver in the big moments, the want to have the football in his hands when a big final is there to be won and execute when the pressure is at its highest that has earned him the universal respect of the football world.
To mark his 350-game milestone, from today The Advertiser is running a three-part feature on Burgoyne’s incredible journey from being in Darwin where he was born on October 21, 1982, and where he spent the first few years of his life before moving to Port Lincoln.
Both his parents are Aboriginal — his mum is from Darwin and his father Peter Burgoyne Snr is from a mission at Koonibba which is 40 minutes west of Ceduna in SA. His dad played two seasons of league footy with the Port Magpies in the SANFL which began a proud family tradition at Alberton.
“We played footy before school, at recess, lunch time, after school and at training,” Burgoyne said.
“I would walk to and from school with a football and I enjoyed sleeping at my cousin’s house the night before a game and we’d wake up and go to the game together, and that instilled team work into you as well.
“Whatever I remember about my footy as a kid it was always fun.”
Dean Miller was coaching at Mallee Park but knew Burgoyne long before he first showed up to the footy club in the under-9s.
“He was a bony little rake but always got into it, he wasn’t afraid and didn’t back out,” said Miller, now 55.
“He was a good running footballer and so hungry for the football, and the skills you see on TV now, that’s what I saw back then.
“He’s come a long way from a little country town but we still talk from time to time, we’re not related but he calls me uncle out of respect. He was always a very respectful boy.”
Burgoyne’s cousin Harry Miller, who played AFL football with Hawthorn, is three years older than him but said he always matched it with the big boys growing up.
“We had a nice little group of mates and cousins we mucked around with, we’d do a lot of fishing and camping, and after school it was straight to playing footy,” Harry said.
“He was very talented in a lot of sports — soccer and cricket as well as football in Port Lincoln — typical of a country kid.
“When he was 12 he played under-17s with Peter and Choppy and even then he was winning best-and-fairests and would always be in the best players.”
Eddie Betts followed in Burgoyne’s footsteps at Mallee Park and says he was destined for the big time.
“We knew the Burgoyne brothers and Byron Pickett were all going to be drafted,” Betts said.
“They got picked up two years before I did and it was a pretty unique town and footy club for all that talent to come out, and there’s still a heap there.
“They don’t call him Silk for no reason, I think he’s second to Adam Goodes for the most games by an indigenous player and he has the most finals appearances by any current player.
“Four premierships, he’s an absolute superstar of the game.”
The first time Burgoyne went to Alberton Oval was to play in the Port Adelaide Cup as a kid, but it became his second home when the family moved to Adelaide after brother Peter joined the Magpies’ under-19s.
“I used to go down and watch him train and in my early years I’d go down and watch pre-season as well,” Burgoyne said.
“So I always wanted to play for Port Magpies coming through the ranks.”
He donned the black-and-white stripes as an under-17 and got the royal treatment as far as coaches went on his journey to league footy at the Magpies — playing under the likes of Kym Kinnear, Neville Thiele, Gary Tredrea and Stephen Williams.
“All great Port Magpies men, I was very lucky when you look back on it now to have that class of former players at the club and to learn off,” Burgoyne said.
“We used to flick between Ethelton and Alberton for training and I loved every minute of it.”
Burgoyne was 17 and in Year 12 at Seaton High School when he made his league debut against Glenelg at Alberton.
“I played halfback that day, I played the majority of my juniors on ball and forward then came into the league team and Stephen’s coaching group played me halfback which was a bit different,” he said.
“But when you’re a kid you just do exactly what you’re told, if they say you’re playing in the backlines you play in the backlines.”
He was paid $150 a league game and $50 in the reserves.
“That money was like gold when you’re in Year 12,” Burgoyne said.
It was during his high school years when he also met another Port Adelaide legend for the first time in Greg Phillips who would become his father-in-law.
Phillips won eight premierships and captained Port Adelaide, and is fourth on the list of most national games at senior level ever with 447 behind only Caig Bradley, Peter Carey and Russell Ebert. But when Burgoyne was first introduced to Amy’s dad he wasn’t across all of that.
“I knew of him and he played footy for the Magpies, but I wasn’t too familiar with his achievements in football,” Burgoyne said.
“So I went home and did some research on what his record was.
“He obviously had a great career and as I came through the Magpies he was one of the assistant coaches.
“He was always very welcoming to me especially when I was a lot younger.”
The extended family goes back to Port Lincoln at Christmas time where Burgoyne is a favourite among the kids.
“Shaun takes a huge footy bag of all the gear that he’s worn and gives it to all the kids there. There are probably more kids running around Port Lincoln with Hawthorn guernseys than anyone else,” Phillips said.
Four of them are his own — Ky, Percy, Leni and Nixie.
“They’re into their footy and their basketball,” Phillips said.
“It’s hard to explain this but when you see Ky walk on the footy ground, it is Shaun to a tee. Shaun has a way of walking and you can pick it a mile away, and Ky the oldest one is just like the old man.”
AS a talented teenager, Burgoyne was always going to be drafted but the question was to where.
In the lead-up to the 2000 national draft, he met with all 16 clubs and the only one that told him they weren’t interested was St Kilda because they knew he would be gone by their next available pick.
“They had number one and two picks that year and had decided they were taking Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke,” Burgoyne said.
“But every other team said you may come to us.
“I’d met Port a few weeks earlier and had spoken to Mark Williams a number of times and I knew that if I was there at Pick 12 Port was going to take me.”
How?
“I just knew,” he said.
“I was very lucky.”
Williams recalls some debate over whether Burgoyne was the right player to take with the Power’s first pick, but he was adamant it was happening.
“There was a lot of debate about him actually,” Williams said.
“I didn’t go to the Teal Cup at the time because we were playing finals or whatever, and there was certainly some reluctance to pick him.
“But when I saw him, and having seen Peter who took a while to get going and then really exploded, I just thought he was a taller version of Peter and said ‘we’re definitely going to have him’. I was adamant about that and thankfully we got him.”
It’s hard to know who was happier when the fairytale materialised — Burgoyne or Port Adelaide — but as talented as he was, he was in for a huge shock on the first day of pre-season. But he had the perfect comeback when questioned by the fitness staff.
Tomorrow: Silk #350, the Port Adelaide years
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