AFL 2021: Ed Langdon opens up on move to Melbourne and brother’s premature retirement
Ed Langdon’s former coach gave him plenty of tough love. The running machine opens up on that, his brother’s premature retirement and a new coach’s influence.
Melbourne
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By the time Ed Langdon first met Mark “Choco” Williams he thought football had doled out most lessons he needed across six turbulent seasons.
About being a “dog-hungry” footballer after Ross Lyon turned the Melbourne Grammar schoolboy into a player prepared to tackle and chase to stay in the Fremantle side.
From brother Tom, who had taught him before his premature Collingwood retirement that football is far from everything in life.
From living alone across the Nullarbor where he found a true identity not reliant on how many votes or kicks he won each weekend.
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And about the value of family and friendship, after finally returning home to live with a mate in inner-city Fitzroy and play in front of his parents on the MCG every second weekend.
But Choco?
Well, Choco was just different, and not in the way he has been typecast.
What Williams has taught him is how to kick.
Or more precisely, how to clear his mind to kick — a player who in his first season hit only half of his targets by foot has become one of footy’s most damaging players.
SUDDEN IMPACT
Last week against Greater Western Sydney, Langdon mirrored his season’s 75 per cent kicking efficiency in a remarkable 27-possession, 904-metres gained performance.
And if the image of Port Adelaide premiership coach Williams screaming at Langdon to improve at training is true, it’s still not quite what you think.
“Yeah, I am a hell of a lot better kick now than my first few years at Freo,” Langdon told the Herald Sun.
“I just can’t praise Chocko enough for what he has done for my game.
“He has come in with a program and it was initially a shock to the system but no doubt it has helped the whole team.
“I haven’t seen anyone come into a club and have as big an impact on a team as he has had in my whole career. It’s incredible what he has done to our group and for me.
“He hasn’t once said anything negative about my kicking, it’s ultra-positive and it’s nice to hear.
“He instils a lot of confidence in players, especially the young players. What he is doing is unbelievable.”
Langdon has never had that smooth Brett Deledio hand-to-foot ball drop, but what Williams has changed is his state of mind rather than technique.
As Williams said on the day he was appointed to help fast-track Melbourne’s kids, he has always been an educator more interested in performance psychology than ranting and raving.
“It’s nothing technically speaking, I have always kicked the same way, but what Choco instils is a sense of calm when you are kicking,” Langdon said.
“There is a lot going on in AFL footy, and for that split second when you are kicking, you need to be as calm as you possibly can be.
“It’s about backing yourself in when you are kicking. It’s funny how far that goes. It’s such a little thing.
“He puts you under so much pressure at training, he starts yelling at you to put you in that position you could be on in the field, but the implication is that you are still calm and still manage to hit a target.”
TOE THE LYON
Langdon has not always been everyone’s cup of tea as a footballer but in 2021, he is suddenly one of the game’s most lethal weapons.
“Yeah, the two big rule changes are certainly in my favour,” he said.
“But I think it’s a great thing for the game. It’s opened up the game, but it does put a high premium on a player’s ability to run out the game and it’s certainly something that was good for me.
“I am under no illusion, I certainly wouldn’t be on an AFL list if it wasn’t for that ability.”
A month into Langdon’s second season at the Melbourne Football Club, fans are frothing at the mouth about his remarkable running gifts.
Langdon certainly is the AFL’s running man, having spent every second of Round 2 on the field and being rested for only 7.27min and 10.58min of the Demons’ other pair of victories.
But you know that, and so did Langdon, who says of that ability: “Ross Lyon once told me, you are literally being paid to run.”
That quip from Lyon about being paid to run has never been more apt, with Langdon churning out 14.8km, 16km and 15.5km games ahead of today’s clash with Geelong at the MCG.
Yet does it damn Langdon with faint praise as a backhanded compliment about his limited skill set?
“Well, they were pretty much all backhanded compliments from Ross,” Langdon laughs.
And yet before Simon Goodwin and Williams, Lyon turned the 2014 No.54 national draft pick from a kid into a man.
“Ross was great for me, probably my biggest mentor in the early stages of my career,” Langdon said.
“I can’t thank him enough. Without him I would be nowhere near where I am.
“I was a skinny 18-year-old private school kid moving across the country and I certainly wasn’t the most polished. And I wasn’t the most appealing prospect for coaches, but Rossy taught me how I should be playing footy.
“I probably didn’t value intensity or pressure or chasing and tackling in junior footy and Ross made it pretty clear early on if I wasn’t doing that I wasn’t going to be much of a player.”
LOVE THE GAME
In five years at Fremantle, Langdon carved out a career — two games in his first year then 13, 10, 21, and 22 — while trade speculation was never far away.
When the Demons wooed him back east to bolster their outside run, no one was too surprised to see him return.
He says he has finally been able to find that work-life balance that involves family, mateship and time away from footy.
“It was probably a bit tougher in Freo not having my family network around me,” he said.
“Obviously I had great support but there is no substitute for being able to hang out with friends and family away from the club.
“I am really enjoying making up for lost time in that regard.”
He is slowly ticking off a Bachelor of Business course with a major in economics, and in his own words, “making up for lost time”.
“I moved to Fremantle four days after my last Year 12 exam so I missed a big chunk of growing up with my mates,” he said.
“We don’t value friendship enough in the world we live in. What I put a lot of time into is relationships with people who really matter.”
Brother Tom famously recommitted to the Magpies in 2018 despite rival interest while on a hiking trip with father Chris that included a visit to Mt Kilimanjaro.
Then after only two more seasons and nine games he retired with a degenerative knee injury.
Yet brother Ed says he already knew the value of seizing every moment of his AFL career.
“I would like to think I already had perspective on footy, it’s more that I look at him and think about how exciting it is for him to be out of the industry,” he said.
“Just looking at the enjoyment in his face, he is working in a wine bar in Brunswick Heads, he lives like a normal person.”
On Sunday Langdon will be back in his happy place at the MCG, where mum Belinda and sister Olivia and dad Chris have watched him these past weeks.
With the intensity Lyon taught him, the running ability he was born with and the sense of calm Williams preaches, it is turning into some kind of AFL package.
KOZZY A CROSS BETWEEN CYRIL AND UNCLE BYRON
A decade as a Port Adelaide key defender gives Alipate Carlile the credibility to label Kysaiah Pickett a football combination of two rare talents.
“He is an unbelievable pressure forward. He is a cross between Byron Pickett and Cyril Rioli, the way he buzzes around,” Carlile said yesterday.
And as the owner of an F45 gym in Adelaide, the Port Adelaide multicultural programs manager can also attest that Pickett has the workrate to fulfil that wondrous talent.
Much has been made of Pickett’s determination to continue his training program when he returned to Adelaide over the summer to mourn for his mother’s passing.
Carlile saw it up close, and walked away confident the second-year Demon was ready for a breakout season despite the interrupted summer schedule.
The connection came after the Demons contacted one of Pickett’s mentors in Paul Vandenbergh, who once ran the Power’s indigenous programs and has recently become the AFL’s new diversity talent manager.
Vandenbergh’s cousin Rebecca is married to Byron Pickett, an uncle to Kysaiah and a regular sounding board and mentor.
“Paul is a business partner of mine and a good friend and Darren Burgess got in touch with Paulie and reached out to him and asked if it was all right if Paulie took him down to a couple of sessions,” said Carlile.
“So he trained with (SANFL club) Woodville West-Torrens at night and did F45 sessions every morning. It was a real box tick.
“He had this attitude which really stood out. He was there to work and there to work hard.
“Obviously with the loss of a close family member, knowing Byron pretty well, they were really shaken up by what happened with a family member.
“To Kozzie’s credit, when we were working out he was pushing really hard.
“He brought his mates in as well and they worked hard in the gym and then when they were outside they were their normal joking selves, just mucking around.”
Byron Pickett won a Norm Smith Medal with Port Adelaide in a 204-game career that included 120 games at North Melbourne and 29 with Melbourne, but the rugged reputation was mixed with many graceful moments.
His nephew mixes elite forward 50 pressure and ground ball gets with a nose for goal that only the very best possess.
Carlile said Pickett had always been determined to help his nephew tread the same path he had been able to travel.
“Byron has been really supportive of Kozzie since he moved to Melbourne. Kozzie stays with him when he comes back here.
“So they are really close and Byron is a mentor with the football stuff and Kozzie has little shades of Byron about him, he has definitely inherited that from him.”
Vandenbergh has also been credited with helping Pickett finish his Year 12 studies before embarking upon his AFL career.
After last week’s four-goal heroics the hype is off the charts about Pickett’s deeds.
But coach Simon Goodwin told SEN yesterday he had a perfect combination of the humility to work hard and the swagger to realise what he could achieve.
“We let Kozzie be Kozzie,” Goodwin said.
“He is a brilliant young man who understands the work required for AFL footy.
“Clearly he’s playing very well and has an unbelievable support network around him with Matty Whelan who works in the indigenous space. We haven’t seen any change in Kozzo.
“He is a wonderful human being who goes about his business and wants to be the best player he can be.
“He is very level-headed and we have to continue to make sure he continues to be Kozzie as well.”
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