Shane Mumford inspires his teammates with his physicality and is playing great footy to boot
SHANE Mumford doesn’t care for tactics and strategy or complex football jargon.
GWS
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SHANE Mumford doesn’t care for tactics and strategy or complex football jargon.
Eight years after being plucked from country football the 28-year-old Greater Western Sydney veteran is transformed in every way.
The former 130kg country ruckman is lean and musclebound and bursting with short-twitch fibres.
The one-time apprentice boilermaker earning $200 a week is halfway through a three-year $2 million contract and lives in glorious Bondi surrounds.
Yet his football methodology harks back to those country days in Gippsland’s Ellinbank and District Football League where nothing came for free.
“I am always trying to hurt someone,” says Mumford of his no-fuss, no bulldust approach.
Mumford’s life has changed for the better precisely because he has not.
A player whose Brownlow Medal odds are dropping by the round will take on Carlton on Saturday with the primary objective of putting fear into opponent’s hearts and doubt into their minds.
From a trade catastrophe — blindsided by Lance Franklin’s decision to go to Sydney — GWS has found a player to build a team around.
Shane Mumford has become the league’s ultimate unsociable footballer.
“I haven’t changed at all,’’ says Mumford this week, all cheery disposition and friendly manner until he crosses that white boundary line.
“Back playing in Bunyip you had to get your own football.
“It was always on the ground or in a contest. On the weekend (against Hawthorn) I was trying to hurt a few people and lay a few tackles.
“If you can get blokes second guessing whether to go in for a contest or get them on the back foot, if you can get in a big hit they won’t be running as well around the ground.
“So I am always trying to hurt someone. I have settled down a bit but if I do get the chance and someone is open I am still going to go through them.”
Mumford is a glorious throwback to the country footballers of old and in the same breath an inspiration to those same weekend warriors that anything is possible.
If a former man mountain from a low-profile country league who doesn’t possess great skills or athletic feats can make it, why can’t they?
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28 rounds into his career as a Giant, the recruitment of Mumford has become riotously successful.
Last year he won his first best-and-fairest award, with Brisbane great Jonathan Brown this week wondering out loud if Mumford could win the Brownlow.
Mumford laughs out loud at the proposition, wondering if Brown just kept on drinking after Friday’s testimonial dinner.
But he agrees the wild change of fortune that saw him tipped out of Sydney — four years after they poached him from Geelong — couldn’t have worked out better.
As it turns out, Mumford reveals he knocked back the chance to play at Hawthorn last year, content with the hassle-free lifestyle Sydney provides.
“I was trying to put my best foot forward and was still expecting some form of contract which never eventuated,’’ he says.
“It was a bit of a shock, obviously not knowing what was going on until the Buddy saga came out.
“Then I had to assess my options — whether I wanted to stay here or go back to Melbourne.
“I met with Hawthorn and it was something I thought about but I love the lifestyle up here and love the anonymity of being able to walk down the street and trying to hassle you. They wanted to get me on board at GWS and in the end that was best for me.”
Mumford drops that little bombshell about nearly joining Hawthorn without reservation or hesitation.
But didn’t he feel any regret when they won the next year’s flag while he battled it out with GWS?
“No, I had won the premiership in 2012 so it wasn’t something that really worried me. We are heading in the right direction and hopefully I can be around long enough to see GWS win one.”
That relaxed off-field manner still has origins in his country roots, with Mumford still amazed to be playing AFL, let alone dominating his position.
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Formerly a beer-drinking, sausage-eating phenomenon, he famously dropped 25kg in 2007 then was elevated from Geelong VFL top-up to AFL regular in the space of two seasons.
He still cannot pinpoint what it was that saw him one day put on his running shoes at night to get out and pound the streets of Bunyip.
Call it a light bulb moment where he saw the future player regretting wasting his talent.
“I had tried out for Gippsland Power and been told I wasn’t good enough and it wasn’t until I had a few good seasons at Bunyip at a big weight.
“I thought, “What if I can get fit?” It just takes that one little thing, it just takes getting started.
“If I hadn’t have taken those first few steps out the door to go running every second night none of this would have happened.
“You don’t want to look back in 10 years time and have those regrets and say, “What if I had tried?”
At that stage Mumford had moved on from boilermaking to labouring, to landscaping then to driving a truck doing site clean-ups.
What would he be doing if he hadn’t got fit and made something of his life?
“If I had kept going down that route, I would probably be 150kg or 160kg by now and not on anywhere near the kind of money I am on now.
“I have worked and I have seen the other side. I have earnt my 200 bucks a week as an apprentice.
“I do realise how good we have it here. This isn’t a lifestyle I want to give up any time soon. They will have to kick me out kicking and screaming.”
Against Carlton on Saturday he will do what he has all year — try to win the first ruck contest then steamroll anyone in his way.
But Champion Data shows he is more than a raging bull, his six scoreboard involvements a game elite and his score assists and launches also above average.
He is averaging a career-high 5.8 tackles a game this year — second among ruckman — and in the past five season has never been outside the top two tackling ruckmen in the game.
Yet none of that quantifies his most important characteristic — he makes his teammates walk tall.
He might be at his third club, but some aggressive verbal sparring with his former Swans teammates when they crossed paths early this year proves he is very much a Giant.
“I don’t know how that even got in the papers. It was just a bit of mucking about with the boys, a bit of friendly banter,’’ he deflects.
He believes those star teammates like Dylan Shiel and Adam Treloar will soon re-sign, their hope for early-season wins clearly satisfied.
Finals is a realistic proposition this year, but first to today’s task — beating Carlton.
And heaven help anyone that gets in his way.
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