Collingwood v North Melbourne: Steele Sidebottom set to play 300th AFL match
Steele Sidebottom was already top of Collingwood’s draft wishlist before kicking 10 goals in a TAC Cup Grand Final. The man who drafted the Magpies 300-gamer reveals how he thought that match had ruined their grand plan.
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Jeremy Howe reckons there is a bit of symmetry with the way Collingwood is playing right now as his teammate and close friend Steele Sidebottom prepares to become only the fourth player in the club’s history to reach 300 AFL games.
Sidebottom, 32, will join teammate Scott Pendlebury (367 games), Tony Shaw (313) and Gordon Coventry (306) in the Magpies’ exclusive 300-club against North Melbourne on Sunday, with Howe saying the team has almost channelled the way their popular wingman goes about it.
“He is such a warm character that everyone is drawn to,” Howe said of Sidebottom. “He looks like he is smiling all the time, even though there must be times when he is hurting.”
“The thing that first comes to mind is that he is out there for the pure enjoyment of footy. I don’t think he is an absolute footy nuffy, but when he is playing, he just has a hell of time.
“That is so infectious for us as a group. It is just so fitting with the way we are going at the moment. It is almost like everyone (at the club) is feeling the way Sidey feels all the time.”
Sidebottom is one of AFL football’s most durable, level-headed and popular players. Those closest to time say that – bar the missing locks – he has barely changed since the day he walked into Collingwood as a 17-year-old kid from Tallygaroopna, just outside of Shepparton.
As Derek Hine, the man who drafted him almost 15 years ago, said this week: “The one thing that sums Steele up is that I challenge you to find a bad word about him anywhere in the industry, whether it is administrators, players or supporters from Collingwood or elsewhere.”
Before he brings up the 300...
— AFL (@AFL) May 25, 2023
Never forget when Steele Sidebottom kicked 10 goals in the 2008 TAC Cup Grand Final 🤩 pic.twitter.com/SXRpqagYuA
His former coach Nathan Buckley agreed: “I loved him from the moment he walked in the door … the stand out for me was just how happy a guy he was when the footballs were out.”
“Part of the challenge of having a long career is to do the work but also to have fun when you are doing it, and Steele balances that really well. He has enjoyed it more than most.”
The caring, sharing Magpies that Craig McRae has helped craft in a force over the past season and a half sits naturally for Sidebottom, as it is an extension of how he has always seen the game.
As Howe says: “I wouldn’t say he is enjoying his footy more than ever, as he has always enjoyed it, but his footy is standing up as good as ever.
“He is about to play his 300th, but there is no reason why he can’t play on for another 100 or more the way he is going right now. He makes us better every time he plays.”
‘THAT’S THE F------- END OF IT’
Hine punched Brad Scott’s number into his mobile phone as he made his way home from the 2008 TAC Cup grand final.
He had just witnessed one of the greatest individual performances from an under 18s player – Sidebottom had kicked 10 goals from his 32 disposals – but Hine wasn’t happy.
A week earlier Hine had resolved he would draft the teenager with the Magpies’ draft pick 11 after watching him dominate a TAC Cup preliminary final.
Hine had shown Scott — who was then a Magpies development coach — some of Sidebottom’s preliminary final edits, which had marginally pushed him ahead of the other player he was keen on, Queensland hopeful Dayne Beams.
But Sidebottom’s extraordinary grand final performance had flipped the script.
“We had tracked him throughout the year, and I had spoken consistently about him to Brad Scott,” Hine recalled.
“For me, it was the previous game in the preliminary final that was off the chart. Then his (TAC) grand final performance was just incredible.
“I distinctly remember ringing Brad after the (grand final) and saying to him: ‘Well, that’s the f------ end of that, there is no chance we are going to get him at pick 11 now.”
It is understood Essendon – armed with pick 5 – had more than a passing interest in the Bombers-mad Sidebottom, but landed on key position star Michael Hurley.
Hine sat nervously in his seat at the Pies’ draft table until every pick before 11 had been taken. When it came to his turn, he could barely get his words out quickly enough: “Player No. 208 375 Steele Sidebottom, Murray Bushrangers”.
Better still, 18 picks later, Beams was still there for Hine at pick 29.
Twenty-two months later, Sidebottom and Beams would be the two of the three youngest players in Collingwood’s 2010 premiership side.
FAMILY TIES
Sidebottom brought about one of the biggest laughs during the Magpies’ 2010 celebrations when he thanked his parents Linda and Noel for having him, saying that he had been “the mistake” as the youngest of five sons.
If that was the case, Collingwood fans would be forever grateful for that.
Those who know Sidebottom best understand that the secret to his football success and the grounded balance he has in his life comes from his family, and in more recent years, from his wife Alisha – whom he married last year – and daughter Matilda.
Howe said the arrival of Matilda had seen a softer side to Sidebottom, saying “he is an unbelievable dad … he gets a day off a week and he is always hanging out with her.”
Genetics helped Sidebottom the footballer. His dad was a good regional player who Steele once said was hindered by the draft in not getting his AFL chance – Carlton Draught, that is – and his mum played more than 500 games of netball for the town.
His brothers too played a significant role in his football – and life – development.
The boys arranged their own footy goalposts and cricket nets in the backyard of their home in Tallygaroopna, with the local ground quite literally in the paddock over the back fence.
Steele’s brother Tyson said this week their father had always insisted on the boys kicking on their opposite foot, which explains Sidebottom’s deft touch on either side of his body.
Buckley said this week he and Sam Mitchell are the best dual-sided players he had seen.
“We’ve all enjoyed our footy,” Tyson said. “I suppose it helped (Steele) growing up with four brothers in the backyard. We all loved kicking the footy out there.”
There were scraps in the backyard (it was always three on two) and plenty of travelling around in the family van which became known to locals as “the Sidey bus”.
Sidebottom’s parents split up when he was 10, which made for some difficult times, but his deep connection to his mum was such that he would end up buying her a home.
Hine said: “Steele’s mum is the salt of the earth … Steele would tell you she has done it tough, but she always looked after the boys.”
“His brothers are levellers. They have all done well in their own right.”
“They are all ripping blokes and his mum Linda is amazing,” Howe said of the Sidebottom brothers.
“It’s funny when you talk about them, it’s all by their nicknames.”
Christian names are superfluous in the Sidebottom family. There’s ‘Boof’ (Trent), named because of the size of his head as a baby; ‘Flea’ (Tyson) as he was the smallest when born; ‘Twiggy’ (Josh) for his skinny frame; and ‘Golly’ (Ryan) because that’s what he called his dummy.
Then, there’s ‘Rusty’, for Steele.
The brothers, and other members of the family, charted a 50-seat bus to drive down the Goulburn Valley Highway to watch Sidebottom in his TAC Cup grand final, each wearing a white cap saying ‘Team Rusty’.
Most of them will be making the same trek – again on a bus – on Sunday morning to come down to watch Steele play his 300th AFL match.
“We’re so proud of his achievements,” Tyson said.
GUT-RUNNER
Buckley said a game early in 2010 — Sidebottom’s second season — not only highlighted Sidebottom’s footy smarts, but also his willingness to work.
“He saved what was a certain goal on the goal line in the dying seconds of the game,” said Buckley, who was forwards coach at the time, of the round 2 game against Melbourne.
“We showed the behind the goals vision … he was basically all the way forward and he had to go 160 metres on a ‘maybe’ all the way back to the opposition goalsquare. He got caught in a one-on-one which looked like he had no chance of winning and he managed to rush it away.
“That just showed the sort of workrate he had was innate. He was a 13-game player and he was absolutely exhausted but he put in three or four efforts and we won the game (by a point).
“If Steele knew the brief, he would run himself to exhaustion.”
He did that for a decade with Buckley as senior coach, including during back-to-back Copeland Trophy winning seasons in 2017 and 2018.
Howe says he is still doing it today.
“He still runs the furthest in our team,” Howe said. “He doesn’t miss training sessions at all.”
Sidebottom did it in two grand finals across two weekends in 2010 – as a 19-year-old – when he was one of Collingwood’s best players in the club’s premiership assault.
Almost 13 years on, Hine says Sidebottom’s performance in the 2010 grand final replay still sits as one of his enduring images.
“His performance in that 2010 grand final was off the charts … for someone of such a young age,” he said.
WHAT THE TEAM MEANS TO STEELE
Buckley got an early insight into Sidebottom’s mindset in the months after the club’s 2010 premiership success.
He revealed this week that Sidebottom missed a recovery session in the 2011 pre-season after being out the night before and the leadership group quietly stood him down for a NAB Cup game against Sydney.
Buckley, who was his forwards coach at the time, said: “I remember vividly having a chat with him. He was leaning on his left shoulder and I was leaning on my right shoulder against the honour wall outside the front of the locker rooms.”
“He was that embarrassed. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t blaming anyone. He was actually in tears because he felt as if he had let everyone down.
“I remember saying to him ‘You will be OK because I can see how much it means to you’.”
Sidebottom has barely missed a session since, with Howe saying that he is one of the first on the track and one of the last off it.
“He doesn’t miss training sessions at all,” Howe said. “He runs the furthest and he never gets injured. He missed a few games when he flew back out of the hub when his wife (Alisha) was pregnant and he has missed a few games with suspension here and there, but in terms of flat-out injuries, he doesn’t get them.”
Sidebottom has missed only 33 games Collingwood has played since his round 7 debut in 2009.
He missed a block of four weeks when suspended for breaking Covid protocols in 2020 in an out of character moment during a rare time when his form was fluctuating and some were suggesting that he might be on the slide as a player.
He admitted this week that was a tough time in a footy sense, saying: “ (20) 20 and (20) 21 weren’t great years for me, but there has been a lot of change at the footy club and at times it feels like a different place.”
Hine said he believed a combination of factors had seen Sidebottom recapture his best form to the point where he would almost be in the mix this year for a second All-Australian selection to go with his blazer from 2018.
“I think it has been due to a combination of different things – a change of coach, certainty in role and probably a bit more maturity as well,” Hine said.
“The real shift I have seen in him is in a positive sense in his leadership, particularly in the last 24 months. When he talks everyone in the room listens. It is really calculated and targeted. I am sure that has always been there, but now he has confidence to articulate it.”
Having played in a premiership in a second season at Collingwood and having agonisingly come close to a second flag in 2018, Sidebottom is desperately fuelled to win another one.
“It was great to win one (a premiership) so young, but I would appreciate it even more if we were lucky enough to win one now,” he said.
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