Luke Beveridge opens up on life, family, football and the wisdom of Willy Wonka
AFL scrapper turned Scraggers hero Luke Beveridge sits down with Mark Robinson and opens up on life, family, footy and the wisdom of Willy Wonka.
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WESTERN Bulldogs premiership coach Luke Beveridge sits down with Mark Robinson to talk life, family, footy and the wisdom of Willy Wonka.
Mark Robinson: I’m going to try discover the mystique of Luke Beveridge. Will I find what I’m looking for?
Luke Beveridge: I don’t think so. What you see is what you get with me.
MR : Do you laugh when people say “there’s something about Luke Beveridge”?
LB: I don’t know if I laugh, but I feel very fortunate because the reason why people ask that question is, as a coach, I’ve been fortunate to have success. I do wonder at times, with all the sliding doors along the way, why I’m so blessed. When those doors slide, a lot of times as a coach they have slid in my favour and our favour wherever I’ve been. Maybe I’m in the right place at the right time all the time.
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MR: It’s got to be more than fortunate to be in the right place, right time as many times as you have been.
LB: People talk a lot about leadership. As a coach, we are a manager of people as much as a coach and I do that with a pretty strong conscience. Whether you’re a manager or a worker at the bottom of the hierarchy, if you do everything with a strong conscience and you influence other people, I think that becomes contagious and I think it reaches critical mass at a point where you can be a successful outfit. And I think that’s happened. I’ve been fortunate to work with people who have already got that base level of conscientiousness and we’ve worked together well. That’s the root of it all. How you implement that working environment is a challenge.
MR: Everyone asks about the influence your dad John (long-time St Kilda recruiter) had on your life. But what influence did your mum, Rosa, have on you?
LB: More than anyone else in my life. She taught me unconditional love. That it doesn’t matter what other people do who are close to you, as long as you love them. And if you want to nurture that, then you’ve got to think before you speak and think before you act. You know, growing up, we didn’t have a lot but what we did have was her love and guidance. She’s a strong lady, she was the rock.
MR: How many in the family?
LB: Four kids. I’m third in line. Yeah, Dad was interesting. I always think, for him, he had two kids too many. He could cope with two, three was too many and four tipped him over the edge. There was a real discipline in the way he fathered and that was important for me, but he had low tolerance.
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MR: Are you intolerant?
LB: No. I’m the opposite. I probably got it from Mum.
MR: How much has that helped with your ability to be patient with people, find time for people and clearly have an ability to get in contact with a person’s soul, if that’s the right word?
LB: I have a genuine care and love for people. When I meet someone, I like them before anything. The only reason I would dislike someone is if they do something to me or against me unsolicited, where I haven’t deserved it and they had no right to do it. Then I’m probably like an elephant with a thorn in its foot, I remember it for a long time. But I start from a base level that I like you and you have to do something pretty wrong not to.
MR: You had a rage in you as a young bloke, an aggressive streak and it led to street fights. Did part of your character push you to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves?
LB: At the time it was that, but to put it simply, I try to stand up for what’s right. There was a time when I had to be physical a few times, actually quite a few times growing up. Normally it’s verbally these days and I hope that I never had to do that again. We grew up in what you consider a pretty docile suburb in East Bentleigh, but at the time there was a lot going on in the streets. There was even a drug culture around the place. There was a great rivalry amongst kids at different schools, different junior clubs and at times that manifested into some physical confrontation.
MR: Do you look back and think, ‘Gee I’m a role model now, that was not good’. Or do you look back and think you were a role model for sticking up for people who couldn’t stick up for themselves?
LB: I don’t regret it. Part of the time was sticking up for other people, but quite a few times it was just sticking up for me. I didn’t instigate things. There was tension, some friction and I’m not sure what it was borne out of. But there were confrontations where I had to stand my ground.
MR: Marcus Bontemeplli said recently you were a funny man. He said the coach thought he was funny, but that you were actually “awkward funny’. True?
LB: (Laughs). Am I funny? I’ve got a strong sense of humour. I love a gag. Actually we’ve got comedian Luke Heggie coming to a function shortly. I recently saw Luke on Foxtel and I thought he was really funny. And Peter Gordon asked me the other day have I got any recommendations and I said why don’t you try Luke Heggie, I reckon he would sensational. We have an unofficial season launch at the Gordons and Luke will be there and it’s all on me.
MR: From watching a late-night show on Foxtel.
LB: Yep. I ran out of jokes about the first six weeks of my tenure at the Dogs, so I have to rely on the boys to tell a gag here and there. Now I’ve become a joke critic and then that becomes funny at times. That’s maybe the awkwardness.
MR: You tell jokes to the players minutes before they leave the rooms to play don’t you?
LB: I lighten the mood at times. We all function in different ways and this new generation seems to function better with the edge off a little bit and you have to find a way to do that. I spend about 15 minutes with the players icing what our plans are for the day and we might start off with a lighter moment. Not always, but pretty regularly.
MR: And you once watched Will Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on a Friday night and incorporated it into your speech to the players the next day?
LB: You find yourself up late watching late-night movies. I don’t go to bed early, I rarely go to bed before midnight. What I’ll do at times is work and I might have the telly on.
MR: You like watching movies?
LB: I love watching movies.
MR: And you watched Willy Wonka and used it in the pre-match the next day?
LB: I did ... it was about honesty.
MR: When Charlie gave back the gobstopper and no one knew?
LB: No, Slugworth knew.
MR: So, you asked who was going to be honest that day?
LB: It wasn’t a question, more validation. We had honesty in the room. Depending on how emotional you are and your range, that little scene in the movie is one of the most heart-wrenching moments I’ve ever seen on TV. It was such fantasy, such a fiction and I remember as a kid that it had an affect on me. When I think of our players and how honest they’ve been and are — and I don’t talk about myself as a storyteller — but when you start to tell the story, you’ve got to relate it to what you’re doing and your own group. Ultimately, the premise of that story was that we have a core of honesty and that’s why we’re on the right track.
MR: Clearly you’re an arm around a player far more than you are putting a player in a headlock to get your message across.
LB: I think it relates to the choices you make as a coach and as a decision-maker around players’ futures. Ultimately, they’re going to finish up in the game or not get a game and we make a choice whether or not we’re prepared to get close to them, because at some point we’re going to have to have a hard conversation. Will it be easier to have a hard conversation if you’ve distanced yourself from them? In many ways yes because you don’t feel like you’ve got that connection. I made the choice very early on, and it’s the way I am and it started at St Bede’s, that I would be close to my players. It’s up to them about how close they want to feel to me, but I feel close to them.
MR: How do you find time for so many individuals in your life?
LB: A big part of it is just staying out of their hair. A big part is not doing anything. They don’t want - I don’t believe - an overbearing personality. I’m not taking them out for coffee and having lunch with them every second day. I don’t do that. It’s just the connection when you see each other and the consistency in the your behaviour, that’s all you need. So, it doesn’t really have to be time consuming.
MR: An hour after you were on stage on Grand Final night singing “Western Bulldogs ... at the weekend” with your great mates, I walked out with you and despite the Bulldogs winning their first flag since ‘54, all you wanted to talk about was our good mate Bruno Conti, who was the VAFA pres when St Bede’s won the three flags. I thought that was an example of you finding time for a person, which you are known for.
LB: I don’t see myself as any different to anyone else. People have asked have I refocused on this year, is there going to be a premiership hangover? But there’s internal and external. Internally, we’re working for the footy club and we’re on a new journey again. But when you and I were walking down Southbank that night, I was external. We were talking about life and who we knew and six degrees of separation and I love that sort of stuff. The only time it gets hard for me is if there’s a lot of people who need your time and I just haven’t got the time. But I love catching up with people talking about people, in this case Bruno.
MR: Do you remember Grand Final day vividly from the moment you woke up to the moment you hit the sack?
LB: I wouldn’t say vividly. My memory of most days isn’t that vivid. I’ve spoken to others and they don’t agree in their own world, but the game went fast. It was like time never stood still. It ticked by so quickly. That last seven minutes when we started to get a gap was the only time - and there was no respite - but it was the only time you could start to process what was actually happening.
MR: You told the players in the pre-game on Grand Final day to “bring their instruments”. What was the messaging there?
LB: It was two things. I related a story from when I worked for an auctioneer years ago, a receivership-liquidation house, which wasn’t always nice. When they knocked down the Southern Cross Hotel, the auction house I was working at pulled out a lot of the furniture they were going to sell. And the hotel still had the stars and the names on the doors from when the Beatles stayed (in 1964). All of them, John, Paul, Ringo and George. I remember thinking, I should buy one of these doors. And, to the players, I was talking about the Grand Final parade and there were so many people and they were there to see us. And as they walked up the race on Grand Final day, I said there’s going to be 100,000 people there ready to see them. And the only way they were going to perform and be creative is if they thought about their strengths, which is their instruments, and they needed to being them.
MR: And the players were the Beatles?
LB: The Beatles did go on some sort of parade down Melbourne’s streets and because it was foreign territory for me - I had never been on a Grand Final parade - I have to say I felt special. I was blown away. Because the Swans colours blended into ours, it was like everyone there was a Western Bulldogs sorority and fraternity. When we saw the masses down Wellington Parade to the MCG it was incredible. I told the players I imagined they probably felt like the Beatles. We virtually felt, in a sense, like rock stars because of all the support. What was there, 200,000 people? Amazing.
Originally published as Luke Beveridge opens up on life, family, football and the wisdom of Willy Wonka
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