Geelong skipper Meg McDonald opens up about her family heartbreak as the Cats steel for preliminary final
Meg McDonald opens up on her family finals heartbreak as Geelong looks to continue its incredible run of victories to achieve what no other Cats AFLW outfit has in its short history – a flag.
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Gordon McDonald was a jokester. An entertainer.
He liked to text his daughter with his admiration for Geelong defender Tom Stewart, who he thought was “the most underrated kick in the AFL”.
He loved footy. Loved his family.
He served at North Melbourne as the club’s physio for 22 years.
He was “the best”.
He was Meg McDonald’s dad.
Gordon passed away on November 5.
Not even three weeks ago.
“Dad loved his footy,” Meg – one of three daughters of Gordon – said this week.
“One thing I said last week was that he would get asked, ‘Are you sure you didn’t want to have a son?’.
His response was always, ‘That’s OK, I have Meg’.
“He loved my footy, and footy was a real pillar of our relationship.
“I feel like at this time, words … you’re worried that they’re too reductive when you try to describe someone.
“But I felt that he was the same person to everyone he met. In all the messages that I’ve had, it’s when people have described the last time they met him, or a funny story – he was a jokester and he loved entertaining – but he was really open and honest with his own life and how he grew, learned, developed.”
In the thick of an AFL Women’s finals campaign, Meg played exactly a week after the Sunday morning phone call that changed everything, in an elimination final.
Then again, last weekend – just three days after Gordon was farewelled in Melbourne – McDonald and her team defied the odds to stave off the fast-finishing Demons.
Gordon would have loved it.
She never considered not playing.
“It’s all to do with timing, I think,” the captain said.
“A week was going to pass, and it was a really big game for us.
“But also, everyone including his wife (Naomi), said to me that that’s what he would have wanted. At the end of the day, it wasn’t even because of that. It was because I love footy, I love the club, I love my teammates.
“I felt really supported and I wanted to play.
“Everything else fell away that week. Training (on the Wednesday) started with Nina (Morrison) acknowledging what had happened, and I remember she said ‘we have an opportunity this week to do something that this club has never done before, which is win a final’.
“That was a great way to refocus and then it was really a special game. We won, so many of my family were here and the club was so supportive of them.”
As McDonald navigates the most difficult period of her life personally, the Geelong skipper is also in the thick of her richest football experience as the Cats travel north to take on champion outfit Brisbane in a preliminary final.
Her and dad’s footy relationship was one of “so much passion”.
“There was always the balance, as I say to my teammates, that their parents should try and achieve the balance that dad did … between telling you ‘your kicking was pretty off today’, but also ‘they should probably play you in the midfield, because then the team would win’,” she laughs.
“It had that great balance that people that are lucky enough to have great footy dads do – thinks the world of you, but also gives you some things to work on each week.”
His honesty and ability to reflect on his own life was important, too.
“I have had periods in my adult life where I haven’t felt like I was succeeding in the way that I wanted to,” Meg said of his advice.
“That’s why football has been so powerful for me. It’s given me this whole other avenue of community and expression and career that’s come from just doing what you love.”
When McDonald was delisted by the Bulldogs at the end of 2017 – the inaugural AFLW season – she and Gordon hiked New Zealand’s other-worldly Milford Track, the mountainous Fiordland National Park a reprieve from football as the next season’s preseason began.
“He was really hopeful that I would get picked up in 2018, and I didn’t,” she said.
“We went away and did that together and that was a fantastic memory. He, like many, would think the world of your kid’s footy and think, ‘why can’t people just see it?’.
“But I think, like me, he couldn’t be happier with where I’ve landed.
“Whenever I get asked about getting delisted by the Bulldogs, I think I wouldn’t be the player I am, I wouldn’t be in the situation I am, if that hadn’t happened.”
One of her biggest wins was getting Gordon to “embrace Geelong”, finally using the term “we” in references to Cats after decades as a Shinboner.
“That has shown after his passing – how fantastic footy has been,” McDonald said.
Her sisters Lucy – who lives in London – and Maddie, who lives in Canada, have stayed in town for what could be.
It’s not as simple as doing it for Gordon on Saturday night – and, McDonald hopes, in next Sunday’s AFLW grand final.
This team, she says, was on an upwards trajectory regardless having timed its primed football for the game’s pointy end.
“We are consumed by our own improvement and the belief comes from really solid evidence that our best footy works and all that sort of stuff. But at the same time, when that happens on the eve of finals, it ultimately is a reminder of your connection and how much we love each other and how important our support systems are to us,” she said.
“Really, for me, I played that week but I wasn’t and haven’t been nearly as present as I would otherwise have been, and necessarily as vocal and all of that.
“So as a leader of the group, the pride that I felt in not only my team’s improvement as individuals and assumption of the mantles of some of the best midfielders in the comp and all that, it’s that I wasn’t as present and they were just fine. Not only that, they expressed themselves and led each other and supported me in a way that I probably knew was in there, but through the worst circumstances, it further revealed itself.”
The last month has been knockout football for the Cats, who had to win their last two games to make the finals.
It was the team’s Round 9 win over Richmond that got McDonald thinking the team’s “juicy bit” was there for the taking.
It couldn’t end.
This weekend, too.
“Keep playing” has been the mantra for the team this season, born in the preseason and truly coming to life in recent weeks.
“We are seeing and experiencing things and playing better than we ever have been before,” McDonald said.
“I feel like our timing is just right, and a prelim final – something I’ve been able to take out of the last two weeks is you’re in more of a day to day present space.
“That can be what you’re desperate for in sport … from a perspective point of view. You desperately want to win, and we know what playing in a grand final would do for this group and club and how historic it would be.
“But you also have a different perspective. There’s a lot of freedom that can come with that. I look at us and I think, ‘we could be anything’.”
The mantra has taken on a new potency in recent weeks, too – both personally and as a team.
“It started as ‘keep playing’, in however iteration you want to (take it),” McDonald explained.
“If we want to keep playing, we’ve got to win. If you want to play well, you’ve got to not look anywhere beyond the next moment.
“That’s been the focus.
“It means 100 different things to everyone, and you can take it however you like. Playing the moment in front of your face.”
It was squarely in front of her face in the team’s elimination final against Essendon a fortnight ago when emotions threatened upon entering the ground.
“It means something to me at the moment,” McDonald said.
“But also to the group and hopefully if we keep getting the job done, it’ll be there forever.”
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