North Melbourne star Luke Davies-Uniacke opens up on his wake up call and life at the Kangaroos ahead of 100th game
Luke Davies-Uniacke has always had talent – but it took a harsh lesson from a well-known football identity to save that talent from going to waste. The young star opens up to JON RALPH on his journey to 100 games.
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Footy great Gerard Healy spent time building a relationship with Luke Davies-Uniacke surfing the waves off the Mornington Peninsula before he hit him with the verbal haymaker that would change the course of his career.
Brownlow Medallist Healy had been asked to help mentor the wildly talented No.4 overall pick amid a career that was in danger of flatlining.
As Davies-Uniacke hits the 100-game milestone this weekend, he mentioned the tough love from a football identity who had told him he was wasting his potential.
When pressed, he revealed it was Healy – but was deliberately vague about the message.
“He gave me a good kick up the arse,” was all Davies-Uniacke would reveal.
What Healy told him in Rye was this – you are one of the laziest players I have ever seen and you don’t even know it. You think you are working hard but you aren’t. Unless you invest in your own career – with work rate, with dedication to detail, with off-season toil – you will never be better than the rest.
It came from a place of love and a position of trust as he took Davies-Uniacke to meet footy’s stars before they told him about their massive off-season training programs.
His own preparation was inadequate in comparison.
It was the conversation that led him to where he is now – a six-match streak of AFL Coaches votes, one of footy’s most dynamic players, a likely $8m-$10m deal at North Melbourne in the wind.
As Davies-Uniacke reflected this week, of a career that saw him battle to make the grade amid an early osteitis pubis struggle and VFL football as recently as 2019, the road to 100 games has not been smooth.
“One hundred games. I am pretty proud of it. It is one of my goals. I have a couple I am not going to tell you about. A couple of goals I like manifesting over. The father-son (qualification) is awesome. When I first started I knew I could get to this milestone but it’s been a tough road and a bit of a slog,” he said.
“There was a stage where I didn’t think I belonged. I wasn’t playing much midfield time, I was playing VFL and not really enjoying it. And not really having much impact as such at VFL level.
“I copped a bit of a whack from a certain somebody and it was good. It was what I needed. To get to 100 games and to do it for North Melbourne is awesome.”
Davies-Uniacke isn’t just in career-best form. He is setting the competition alight, and delighting North Melbourne premiership star David King who has dubbed him the inaugural member of the Leg Drivers Association.
He powers through stoppages driving those legs with force and intent, averaging 30.8 possessions in the past six weeks, as well as averaging as Champion Data’s fifth-highest rated midfielder.
In a victory for those lessons instilled by Healy about owning your own pre-season preparation, Davies-Uniacke says his summers now never go to waste.
“I was this height back in the day so I think (the leg driving) stemmed from when I was a young kid at local footy. I would always take it on anyway. No matter what level I played I looked to take the game on and I have always felt like I had a good ability to find my way through traffic. It’s one of my biggest weapons as a player and I think it comes from a bit of work I have done in the off-season to get my body where it is at.
“I work with a guy in Mt Martha by the name of Bryce Marshman. He is a guru at leg weights and explosiveness and he gets a lot of his stuff from watching trainers from the NFL.
“Bryce first started with Jacob Weitering and got him to where he is now. When you get into the season that program takes over but I go down over the off-season to train. So I do a Tuesday and Thursday with him in the off-season and it’s all leg workouts. I am going to get (Harry) Sheezel and the other boys down. It’s one of the areas the other boys want to get better at, with leg power and leg strength.”
Those pre-season workouts have combined with the club’s jiu-jitsu and grappling sessions with Max Viney, brother of Melbourne’s Jack and son of North Melbourne’s football boss Todd Viney.
LDU sought out Viney last pre-season after seeing his work with the likes of Scott Pendlebury and Tom Mitchell, with Alastair Clarkson enlisting the grappling and tackling expert to run this summer.
“I knew Lukey was a serious footballer so when he got in touch and wanted to do some training it was a real testament to him as a young professional,” Max Viney said this week.
“He is super talented and can do a lot of the physical stuff naturally but for someone like him to seek me out shows the calibre of the player he is.
“He is great. He’s an athlete and he’s very co-ordinated but the sport is notorious for having a high skill ceiling. People often quit after six months but Lukey rocketed through the ranks because of his physicality and physical intelligence. He’s smashing it and he’s got a really bright future in jiu-jitsu.”
Davies-Uniacke’s father Peter was his greatest football supporter, but passed away in 2021 of cancer.
LDU still gets home once a week to see mother Cath, even if he has been usurped by her groodles Doug and Dolly in the family pecking order: “They keep her busy. So it’s fair to say she loves them more than me. She is good. She is awesome,” he said.
That trip down the Peninsula coincides with a weekly surf and, yet, Davies-Uniacke admits he is learning his boundaries.
Last year, he missed the final two games of the year after a surf on the players’ day off took place in huge swells as the former grommet came a cropper.
“I still do a bit of surfing but not as much as I did. I copped a bit of a whack from Clarko, it was well needed. I am pretty confident on my surfing and have always done it since I grew up. I go all right and it’s one thing that helps my mental health and it’s nice being out there and getting the toxic stuff out of you.
“I was surfing back home in Rye and happened to come off but the board did something to my big toe joint, it was so unlucky. I was coming off the wave and I have done it a million times.
“I had to walk back from my surf and that was the worst part. I was like, s--t, I think I have done something pretty bad here, so I was walking back on the track and it was feeling pretty sore.
“I got home and it was throbbing and pretty painful and I rang the docs and said I think I have done something here. The next day I came into the club and spoke to Clarko and said I messed up. You make a mistake and have to learn from it. Clarko said you have to be smart about when you do it and how big the surf is.”
A young LDU in under 14’s for Rye Demons #LDU100pic.twitter.com/1tLzN5vsmT
— Batesy (@mitch23bates) June 28, 2024
So this weekend, watch for LDU to come charging forward out of a stoppage but also running back the other way when the Roos need that defensive chop-out.
It is what Healy instilled in him but also what he is attempting to hand down to the younger generation.
“I feel like I have been playing some pretty good footy all year, just taking initiative in the midfield and helping the younger guys. I feel like I have had more of a say with Georgie Wardlaw, Will Phillips and Tom Powell and ‘Sheez’.
Doing a lot more work with them, watching game vision, doing body craft, stuff that Ben Cunnington and Shaun Higgins used to be with me.
“It’s basic defensive acts, hold yourself accountable to them, knowing stoppage structures and set ups, that’s helped me the most.
“It was the one thing that was missing in my growth in my leadership, so that is the side of things that has helped me the most. I tell these guys to do one thing and then I have to do it myself. That has been the biggest part of my game that has helped me to play the way I am.”
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