He’s not the Messiah, he’s the Bont: How we knew Bontempelli would be a star

At the risk of over-reaching, Marcus Bontempelli is a football Moses. With Easter approaching, Jesus Christ would’ve been a more topical biblical reference, I know, but he walked on top of water. Moses famously parted the sea with his will and that’s what Marcus can do on a football field. Only it’s opposition defenders that he waltzes through and not the Red Sea.

A few years back when I played alongside Marcus, he routinely divided the chaos of opposition players with his poise and loping run. From a few feet away I would watch in awe as Marcus won the ball and then, as if striding in waist-deep water, would slowly move out of the chaos and into open space with opposition players falling away to either side. For those couple of seconds, the disciplined, clicking, rhythm of time would almost liquefy and morph into glue. It’s a rare gift.

Rare gift: Marcus Bontempelli.Credit: Getty Images

We knew we had a special one at the Bulldogs almost as soon as he got to the club. He was pick No.4 in that year’s draft, so there was a natural expectation and curiosity when he arrived. Some of us older players at the time had heard the jousting that had gone on behind the scenes about which player the club would take with the coveted pick. The sliding doors of footy clubs and their fortunes.

Within a couple of weeks of his first pre-season, I overheard a teammate say “the first three players picked in that draft must go OK!” There’s nothing like training and competing up close with a young player to get a feel for what they might become and to a man, we all felt that this kid could be anything. A better way to describe it might be the shudder of fear that rippled through the club when we thought he wrecked his knee in that first Summer at the kennel. “Bonti” was doing some one-on-one competitive marking work with lockerroom favourite Jack Redpath and they were both redlining it. In one aerial duel, Bonti landed awkwardly and hyperextended his knee. Initially the fear was he’d done his ACL. Poor old Jack was scolded by the coach, then Brendan McCartney, for going too hard! The fear of a serious injury was heightened because of Bonti’s natural gifts. Mercifully, the knee was OK.

As a young player, his legend quickly grew. By the time he wrestled the ball, ducked and weaved between Demon opponents in his debut season and kicked a goal over his shoulder on his opposite foot to win the game, he went from Bonti to “The Bont”. A small but telling detail. His first couple of seasons were tortured ones for the Bulldogs, but he quickly became a shining light, a football prophet in waiting. In many ways, he single-handedly represented hope. After one of the many hidings during this time, at Marvel Stadium in a Sunday twilight blockbuster, there was an after-match function for players, staff and families. I was still icing up in the rooms below and unbeknownst to me, my wife was struggling in the lift with three little kids and a double pram. Marcus just happened to be there as the doors opened and stepped in to help. He asked how Justine was and then also about the kids. All by name. Maybe insignificant, but we never forgot it.

By the time I became captain in 2015, it was pretty clear that The Bont was our best player. One thing I used to do was hang around the lockerroom straight after the Monday team review meeting. Players, now with their guards down and a little bit braver to speak up, would shoot the breeze about the video clips we’d just gone through with the coaches. I would busy myself with a pointless task of re-lacing my footy boots, while listening to the conversations going on. Most weeks, I observed teammates of Marcus whispering to each other about his exploits from the game just gone. Our lockerroom was always loud, crass and hilarious. Like many lockerrooms, I suppose. The whispers of awe were saved for only one player in my time, and that was Marcus.

During this time people would sometimes ask me what he was like and I told them he was our Ferris Bueller. We all adored him, he was a righteous dude.

One of the difficult things in writing about Marcus is that he is a winner. There has been no major injury, certainly no scandal and very few questions about him as a player that he hasn’t already answered. If there are challenging times ahead, I have little doubt he’ll navigate his way through it with his signature poise and class. The set shot on Sunday was significant because it was one of the few question marks that remained. He could’ve played on. He could’ve passed the ball to wind the clock down. But he didn’t. He slowed things down. Knowing Marcus as I do, I think he had wanted this moment to cross that question mark off the list. He turned the question mark into an exclamation mark.

The fascinating complexity of Marcus, as I see him, is his combination of humility and a genuine curiosity about how good he could be. That’s not always an easy wire to walk if you are the leader. In just a few years, he’s gone from Ferris Bueller to a football prophet. A football Moses. Whatever or whoever he becomes next, I’m sure of only one thing: he’ll do it in his own time.