GWS star Toby Greene is loving life in Sydney after turbulent start to his AFL career
GWS star Toby Greene has just signed a multi-million dollar deal, but his ride to the top hasn’t come without incident. The lovable Giant spoke to JON RALPH about injuries, his MRP rap sheet, Sydney life and that massive contract.
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TOBY Greene just doesn’t lose a one-on-one contest.
Station him deep in attack or let him scream up the ground leading at the ball carrier and he becomes one of footy’s most dangerous men.
Unstoppable, even.
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Which may be why it has taken four months for him to reluctantly reveal exactly how he broke his toe last October, an injury that has ruined his pre-season.
The answer finally comes with a chuckle and a rueful shake of the head you get the feeling Greene has perfected over the years.
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It is just hours after GWS megastar Greene has signed a six-year, $6 million deal and yet in so many ways he is still the naughty kid in the playground.
“I was just being an idiot, wrestling with my mate in an apartment in New York and I got flung into the wall,’’ Green says, ’fessing up to the Sunday Herald Sun at the club’s Olympic Park headquarters in Sydney.
“I didn’t think it was that bad at the time and then it got sorer and sorer, so I had to ring ‘Cambo’ (footy boss Wayne Campbell).
“I thought it was a bit of a laugh at the time, but it took a while to come good, so I won’t be doing that again.”
Greene wants to clarify one thing — he still didn’t lose the fight.
Give him that bit of dignity at least.
“Nah, I will always win,” he says. “I would have been beating (my mate) for sure. I had him on the ground for about five minutes (before that).”
And yet as Greene picked himself up and dusted himself off, he soon realised the collateral damage.
It was an injury that morphed into something more damaging, with Greene only now able to join in full training just weeks from the AFL season.
“Cambo wasn’t too bad about it,” Greene says. “Leon (Cameron) was on holidays so he said, ‘Don’t call Leon’, he had to do that.
“Originally I thought I might be back running by week one of the pre-season but that certainly wasn’t the case.
“It wasn’t the toe in the end, it was the inside of my foot. I must have been protecting it when I started running again.
“My fat pad got really irritated and it took so long to come good. My toe was fine by January, but how I was running affected another part of my foot.
“I just kept having little setbacks but hopefully it starts on the upward trend now.”
Welcome to another chapter in the weird and wonderful life of Toby Greene.
One of the AFL’s few remaining larrikins, he is also one of its most captivating and colourful stories.
Ratbag, fun-loving rogue, ’80s throwback — he is all of those.
Greater Western Sydney loves him so much some at the club think he is their most important player.
Heck, they just handed him six million bucks.
But the more people you speak to in his inner circle and among teammates and coaches you realise one thing.
You can never stay angry at Toby.
Spend any time in his company and you can see why.
He has fought bouncers in Hawaii (he lost that one), been fined for assault after a disastrous Melbourne pub incident.
He continues to rack up match review panel citations (five last year, 13 in all).
But for coach Cameron and the teammates who know, Greene is one of the most popular members of the Giants’ list — the good far outweighs the bad.
The Giants love Greene and he loves them and the city back.
He is comfortably ensconced in inner-city Drummoyne with housemate Jeremy Cameron, loved up with partner Marley Gordon, has never really felt homesick for Melbourne.
Asked if he has any regrets about seven years filled with controversy, Greene clearly believes it has led him to exactly where he should be.
“No, I can’t say there have been any regrets,” he says. “Obviously I have had a few misdemeanours and cost myself here and there, but I guess it was part of the learning process.
“I know it was a bit steeper than others and people will say I was an idiot, which I probably was.
“But I have definitely learnt from it. It’s something I want to continue to learn from.
“I guess when I had that big incident I never thought that was it (for my career) but I guess I was treading a fine line and I knew I had to pull my head in after that.
“I guess it was a stupid thing to do, but it was a valuable lesson.”
Greene, 24, knows he can be his own worst enemy.
A 2016 best-and-fairest winner and All-Australian, he just couldn’t stop keeping out of trouble in 2017.
The reports and fines came thick and fast — three striking charges including a punch that slipped high on Caleb Daniel, a slug to Alex Rance’s head, a reckless kick to Luke Dahlhaus’s face as he fended him off.
He has been counselled by coach and teammates, sat down with a sports psychologist, been urged to curtail his reckless side.
Yet the advice of his mum, Kate, an English and Head of Individual Needs teacher at Melbourne’s Carey Grammar, eventually cut to the heart of the matter.
“She wasn’t happy because the kids at Carey, that’s all they would ask her about. It affects her more in Melbourne, because everyone is asking her,” Greene says.
“I felt like the first one last year (with Caleb Daniel) I wasn’t trying to do what I did.
“The second one with Rance was just stupid. There is a fine line but it’s about being aware of the situation. Hopefully all goes well and I don’t do anything silly like at the Richmond game last year.
“It is something I have to work on but it’s not much of an issue unless I keep missing games of footy like I did last year.”
If the MRP eventually cleared Greene of his bizarre kick on Dahlhaus, his rap sheet counted against him in the punch on Daniel that he felt slipped off a wet Sherrin.
He knows that hurts him, but says he can’t afford not to play on instinct.
“The Dahlhaus one caused a lot of controversy, but I have been doing that since I was eight,’’ he says.
“It’s how I mark the footy. I can understand why there was such a big uproar but I can’t say I will stop doing that. It’s how I protect myself in marking contests.
“I think I did one to Schneids (assistant coach Adam Schneider) today, first training back (laughing).
“Just a little boot in the stomach, I have always done it to protect myself.”
The player exodus from GWS that so many keep predicting just isn’t occurring, Greene joining Josh Kelly, Josh Kelly and Lachie Whitfield as recent big-name signings.
He signed because he loves the joint, but also early in the year so teammates wouldn’t have to be pestered about his business as they were about Kelly last year.
But five or six million, or whatever the exact amount is?
“Yeah, just doesn’t seem right, really,” Greene says. “I didn’t play footy to get paid a lot of money, I just always loved it,” he says.
“It’s good to get a deal with the Giants, it's a dream come true and hopefully it sets me up for the future.
“I guess I have been lucky, I never really got homesick. We get two months of holidays so it’s plenty of time to get back home.”
For Greene there are no fast cars or one-off splurges, just a determination to use those two months to open his horizons.
In his holidays there have been regular trips to South America, Cambodia and America, with Sri Lanka up next.
Check out his Instagram page, filled with photos of Greene hooning around on motorbikes, feasting on Rio’s beauty and generally living the dream.
“I take a massive interest in it,” he says. “Every off-season I go somewhere different. I loved South America, it was a completely different culture to anywhere else in the world.
“Places like Bolivia and Rio, I loved Texas. After Sri Lanka, Europe is next on the cards.
“It definitely opens your mind, there are so many different people you meet. I don’t like sitting still.”
Originally published as GWS star Toby Greene is loving life in Sydney after turbulent start to his AFL career