Andrew Bolt: Selwood shows us all how to win
Geelong captain Joel Selwood moved me most not by anything he did on the field, but his kindness before and after the game.
Andrew Bolt
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I saw a champion at Saturday’s AFL grand final. A real leader of men. But Geelong captain Joel Selwood moved me most not by anything he did to help his team beat the Sydney Swans.
From before the game until after, Selwood showed us in this age of anger you can be kind and still win.
How sad that this obvious fact needs stating.
Before the game, Selwood ran through the Geelong banner holding Levi, stricken son of Geelong legend Gary Ablett Jr, and kissed him before handing him back to dad.
Levi, three years old, cannot speak and may not live long.
After the game, Selwood gave his footy boots to the astonished Auskick boy who’d hung a premiership medal around Selwood’s neck.
Later, doing a victory lap in front of the fans, Selwood picked out Geelong water boy Sam Moorfoot, who has Down syndrome, and hugged him before helping him over the fence to join the players and have a premiership medal around his neck, too.
“The best day of my life,” Sam said later.
Stories of Selwood’s kindness aren’t new at Geelong.
After all, he won the AFL’s Brownlow for good deeds – the Jim Stynes award – and forward Tom Hawkins tells how Selwood supported him not just when Hawkins’ mother died but also afterwards, “on milestones and birthdays and things like that that mum would have been a part of”.
But that stuff off-camera is often missed by the rest of us.
So how fine to see Selwood, so tough on the field, also show the watching world what it is to be fully human. As in loving, too.
True, I’m perhaps too quick to see the worst. But we have a culture in which that worst is too often celebrated.
Tennis star Nick Kyrgios is idolised no matter how many umpires he abuses.
Modern moralists such as Stan Grant even defend women’s rugby league player Cailin Moran for calling the Queen a “dumb dog” and saying it was a “good f. ing day” when she died.
On Twitter, haters rule.
On TV, shows such as Married At First Sight have contestants rip each other apart.
Our previous Australian of the Year was cheered for giving Prime Minister Scott Morrison foul looks.
Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe trades on calling people racist.
But then Joel Selwood demonstrates random acts of kindness during one of the most-watched TV events this year.
The game wasn’t much, but Selwood was everything.
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