‘Highlight of my career’: Hayden Stanton and his stars light up Mulgrave’s Team of the Century
A third of the starting 18 played under him, while a dozen more wouldn’t have looked out of place. Honoured as coach of Mulgrave’s Team of the Century, Hayden Stanton reflects on triumph through tragedy, regret – and what made his boys tick.
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HAYDEN Stanton says there was “something special” about his Garnett Road group.
He’s not wrong.
Mulgrave – which celebrated its 100th anniversary on Saturday night to a packed MCG dining room – unveiled a rollcall of stars for its Team of the Century.
Stanton, who led the club from 2007-2011 for 96 matches – including the 2010 Division 2 premiership – stood tallest, named coach of the coveted side.
And a third of those selected in the starting 18 played under him – six earning a guernsey.
Stanton edged three esteemed nominees for the nod: 1971 flag coach Brian Parker, who served three seasons until ‘73, Frank Clifford, who took the club to three straight grand finals from 1975-77 and dual Hawthorn premiership half-back flanker Ian Bremner (1981-83).
“It was an amazing and humbling experience given the 100-year-old history of the club and some of the people that have played, coached and been involved with the club, it’s pretty decorated so I’m very fortunate and appreciative of being afforded that mantle,” Stanton said, who coached 60 wins, 36 losses and a draw.
Club leading goalkicker and senior games record-holder Adam Booth (full forward), six-time best and fairest Dean Siakoulis (forward pocket), high-flyer Jarrod Fearon-Brown (centre half-forward), 2010 premiership captain Brad Fowler (wing), 2017 Division 2 league medallist Seb Henderson (full back), and dual best and fairest Rhett Wilsmore (back pocket) joined their former coach among the best in 100 years.
“It was quite humbling to see so many guys make the team … socially, they were really tight, on and off-field,” Stanton said.
“Having coached for a long time up until recently, it comes back to the relationships that you either form with your playing group, or that you don’t form, (which determines) part of whether you’re going to have success long-term.
“If I look at the guys that made the team, they all had differences in the way they played, but the common denominator of the group, including the coaching staff, was we wanted to put everything on the table all the time to get the most out of each others’ careers.
“At times when perhaps we weren’t playing our best, it was always easy to look around and say, ‘Hey guys, we need a lift from everybody’ and the collective would always find a way to get the job done.”
Of a previous era, seven-time best and fairest Gerry Boonkkamp won the captaincy, featuring alongside six-time club champion, Darren Linkins, while current-day captain Connor Tilyard (interchange) made the cut at just 24. The faithful also toasted current senior coach Matt Richards, who’ll soon become the only person to have played and coached a combination of 500 games at the club.
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STANTON has “no doubt” more than a dozen players from his time at the helm wouldn’t have looked out of place in the centenary team, such is Mulgrave’s wealth of champions across its illustrious history.
In fact, in his five years at Mulgrave, he coached three soon-to-be AFL premiership players – Luke Ablett (Sydney), Shane Biggs (Western Bulldogs) and Ryan Lester (Brisbane).
“There’s a lot of guys who didn’t make the Team of the Century who were stars for me,” he said.
“Chris Doyle was a star off half-back, Neil Winterton came to the club in 2010 and only through his inability to qualify based on the criteria (didn’t make the cut) ... he won two best and fairests and has gone on to have an incredible career as firstly a playing-coach and then just a stand-alone coach – he was a champion.
“Dom Barker who missed out on the grand final in 2010 and played over 300 games for the club, there were so many players that were fantastic in my time there.”
Rarely-beaten 1960 premiership ruckman and triple best and fairest Darrell Clarke edged man-mountain Allan Cleven for the scarce spot.
Big ‘Al’ gave Stanton’s midfielders silver service through the 2000s, winning the best afield medal in the 2010 flag.
“Al Cleven was arguably the premier ruckman of that time in Division 2, he got knuckled out for a spot in the Team of the Century but Al was well respected by all opposition coaches and our players,” Stanton said.
“We had a pretty talented midfield, but Al’s tapwork was incredible and his ability in his latter career to be able to get back and support the backline, mark the footy, push forward and score was where he really elevated himself as a champion of our club.”
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ONCE lauded by Adam Booth as a “leader of men”, Stanton shares the sentiments for his premiership captain, Brad Fowler, who played 194 games, winning best and fairests in 2004 and ’08 on the way to lifting the 2010 cup.
It was little surprise on Saturday night, Stanton says, to hear Fowler’s name echo through the room.
“When people talk about captains, at any level of football, what you really want from your captain is you want someone who’s prepared to do whatever it takes to bring success not only for the team but in the role that he plays,” Stanton said.
“Brad was just a leader by example.
“Fair to say Brad’s off-field when I first got there was quite sorted – he liked to have a good time. He was a ringleader of a lot of our guys going out, and they just adored him – they would fair dinkum walk over broken glass for Brad.
“Rather than try to (stop) that, I embraced it. There was no disputing he was our natural born leader.
“Any time in games when one of our younger players was physically challenged or someone was attacked off the ball or anything happened, Brad was the first person in there sorting things out and then the next contest, the first guy to put his head in the trough would often get it kicked off.
“Our players just grew from that – that’s just how it was at Mulgrave, and if we had training sessions where it was compulsory, then Brad would deal with the guys who didn’t turn up because that’s what he wanted to do.
“He played with his heart on his sleeve.”
And it arguably came as less of a surprise to Stanton hearing Booth’s call-up at full forward.
The only Lion to play 300 senior games, the 43-year-old – still going strong – was likely one of the very first picked, also standing above all as the best Stanton coached at Mulgrave.
“When we first went up to Premier Division, in Round 1 we played (reigning premier) Noble Park at home and at half-time against the best defenders in the competition of the local football leagues, Adam had kicked five,” Stanton recalled.
“He just showed incredible hands and how competitive he was, never beaten and always determined to give his best every week … 771 goals in a one-club career is an amazing achievement.”
READ MORE on Adam Booth’s career.
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NARROWLY avoiding relegation before Stanton’s arrival, it was quickly apparent the marriage between coach and club was made to work.
“When I first arrived at Mulgrave, I sort of sensed that this was a club that was going to be the right fit for me, and me for them,” Stanton said.
“I knew I was working with a pretty young squad that had transitioned over the previous few years … they’d gone to the well a few times previously and had come up short in winning grand finals.
“I basically took on a relatively newer, younger group, but one that had come through pathways at Northvale juniors, Waverley Hawks and Glen Waverley Rovers.”
Stanton added: “I was under no illusions that it was going to be rebuilding the club and getting the club to a position where we could finally challenge to win a premiership – we didn’t really recruit anyone in the first year.
“I really wanted to have a look and see what we had there – 2007 was really to get the group as fit as possible and work out exactly what sort of pieces of the puzzle we needed, if any at all, and just getting them fitter and more disciplined on and off-field to make sure they got the most out of their careers.”
Three grand finals would follow for Stanton’s men – burning losses to Wantirna South and South Croydon in ‘08 and ‘09 preceded the club’s almighty breakthrough in 2010 – but not without one last gruelling hurdle …
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FEW could launch at a footy quite like Jarrod Fearon-Brown.
Honoured in the Team of the Century at centre half-forward, Fearon-Brown passed away aged just 25 in the off-season of 2009-10, sending shockwaves through a Mulgrave outfit already gutted by two straight grand final missteps.
He had a “highlights reel in local footy as good as anyone’s,” Stanton quipped.
“We lost one of our most talented players, who unfortunately succumbed to his mental demons.
“It’s probably my greatest regret in my football career, not being able to step in … what you don’t ever want to have to deal with is one of your players that you treat like your own kids, taking their own life and not being there to support them with whatever they were going through.”
Family and connection, Stanton believes, was “what made Mulgrave such a special place.”
“One of the strengths that I feel like I’ve always wanted to be as a coach to my playing groups that I’ve coached over a long time is I always wanted to know their lives away from football and be able to share in their work life, relationships (and) family life,” he said.
“We had seven or eight players in that journey where their parents came to every game and watched them – you knew their families, and that’s pretty rare these days – we had a really tight-knit group.
“So when I say ‘regret’, (I mean) not being able to step in and try and guide Jarrod through the troubles he was obviously going through outside of the football field.”
Emotion engulfed the room on Saturday night at the soaring star’s induction.
Just as Stanton recalls how Fearon-Brown “lit up Mulgrave Reserve many times” across his 91 games, he would light up the faithful once again with stories told as uplifting as the marks that preceded them.
“He could stand on a pack of 15 blokes and take a hanger, two metres above the ground,” Stanton said.
“Or he could take on a bloke on the wing, have five bounces and kick a goal from 55.
“He just had an incredible excitement factor about him.”
There was only one way to go for the Lions in 2010 in the wake of tragedy.
What followed was the club’s first premiership since 1979 – breaking the league’s longest drought at the time with a 25-point triumph over Bayswater.
“It helped drive our players,” Stanton said of Fearon-Brown’s loss.
“We had our jumpers remade that year and had (Jarrod’s) No. 43 put on the front of our jumper as a token of what we were playing for.”
Ray Ball, premiership coach in ‘79 and father of ex-AFL Saint and Magpie Luke, spoke to the group in the build-up to snapping the 31-year hoodoo – and would pass the baton to Stanton as the latest man to lead the Lions to the top.
“I’ve got unbelievably fond memories today, 15 years on, from that day and the social club and the change rooms that night was just like an out of body experience,” Stanton said.
“To see so many volunteers and people who’ve been involved with the club for 30 or 40 years, previous players who were just crying like babies over what it meant to our footy club.”
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PLAYER loyalty would make the climb extra special for the Team of the Century coach, who remembers: “We had periods in my time where the club was broke.”
“We had players who were playing for nothing – just for the jumper,” Stanton recalled.
“Guys like Adam Booth, Brad Fowler, Jarrod Fearon-Brown were running around getting $150 to $200 a game and every year clubs would offer them five, six, seven hundred to change, but they never left.
“It meant too much to them to stay.”
Stanton would call time on his coaching stint some 12 months after standing on the premiership dais, as many of the Mulgrave drought-breakers dispersed to other clubs.
“The players who had been through so much pain before that had lost two or three grand finals, they all went away and went somewhere else because they felt like they had climbed the mountain at Mulgrave,” he said.
“After 2011 when we went up to Premier Division and got relegated, I thought that was the right time to hand over the reins to someone else.”
Stepping away after a coaching journey spanning 23 years across six clubs at the end of last season, Stanton says Saturday night’s nod sits up there. Right up there.
“My son, who was there on Saturday night to see me receive that incredible honour, ran water for me as an 11-year-old boy – it just ties everything back to the values of what you believe in,” Stanton said.
“It (being named Team of the Century coach) is the highlight of my football career, from an individual perspective – starting coaching when I was 30 and I’m 53 nearly, it’s a very humbling experience, and one that I’m so proud of, not only for myself, but my lovely wife and family who supported me throughout that whole journey.”
But as he takes a breath from the never-ending trials and tribulations of coaching, there could be yet another chapter to play out at Garnett Road.
“When the time’s right and my time allows me to, I’ll certainly be back at Mulgrave in some capacity supporting the club for the next 25 years.”
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