North Melbourne’s Ben Cunnington loves family, fishing and farming as much as footy
NORTH Melbourne’s Ben Cunnington has been one of the AFL’s most underrated players but not anymore. The star midfielder loves family, fishing and farming as much footy, but get him into a contested situation on the field and he’s almost an unstoppable force.
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PAUL Roos didn’t miss Ben Cunnington’s contested masterclass last Sunday, even though he was on the other side of the city.
As the understated but thankfully no longer underrated North Melbourne midfielder was setting the AFL match record for contested possessions — with 32 — against Richmond at Etihad Stadium, Roos was in the Triple M box at the MCG, providing special comments for the Collingwood-Geelong game.
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Every time Roos looked at the TV monitor, he marvelled at one thing — Cunnington always seemed to have the ball in his vice-like grip.
“I kept looking up at the other match, and they were all were hanging onto him, but he always seemed to be able to get the handball out,” Roos said.
Roos wasn’t surprised with Cunnington’s output, nor the elevated level to which he has taken his game in recent seasons. But he admits he was a little taken back by North Melbourne coach Brad Scott’s post-game clip at him regarding a comment he made about Cunnington and teammate Jack Ziebell seven years ago.
Scott said: “He (Cunnington) has come a long way since Paul Roos said he wasn’t AFL standard.”
Roos doesn’t recall the context of his 2011 quip, but was pleased to find out that while he questioned their aerobic capacities, he also suggested if they could overcome those deficiencies, both could be important players for the Kangaroos.
They’ve done all of that and more, and Cunnington is now drawing comparisons to the likes of Greg Williams in terms of his contested work.
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“When Ben came in, he was always that talented country kid, but he wasn’t a great endurance athlete,” Roos said. “I’d seen a lot of his tapes leading into that (2009) draft, and it’s great to see the sort of player he has become.
“I think you are looking at Ben now in a Josh Kennedy and Patty Cripps mould. In terms of a stoppage player, he is equal to those players, and as good as anyone in the competition.”
Those close to Cunnington acknowledge Roos’ 2011 comments fed the competitive streak inside him, and helped fuel him to become the player he is today.
“When someone gives you a backhander like that, it does stick with you,” said Anthony Stevens, who like Cunnington wore North Melbourne’s No.10 with distinction and is now a close friend and business partner.
Others, including Kangaroos director of coaching Darren Crocker, suggest there have been other turning points in elevating him to possibly the AFL’s most reluctant superstar.
One was when Ziebell was suspended for four weeks in 2012, and he was asked to fill the void, and a more recent post-2016 meeting with Brad Scott where the coach challenged him to stamp himself as the ‘go-to’ stoppage man.
“Brad felt he could become one of the best midfielders in the competition but he needed to see himself as that,” Crocker said. “‘Cunners’ didn’t want to be seen as selfish, he was happy to share it around (with teammates) at the stoppages.
“But Brad said as much as we wanted to share it around to be unpredictable, we still needed Ben to be the main person in there.”
Part of that initial reluctance came from his personality, ingrained from his upbringing on his family’s cattle farm near Princetown on the Great Ocean Road, as Stevens explained.
“Ben is just a beautiful soul, he has got amazing morals and he is so humble,” Stevens said. “He just doesn’t want the attention on him; he would rather it be on the team.
“I said to him ‘Mate, you are an absolute superstar and centre bounces are your forte. All the great players play with a bit of arrogance and you don’t have it.
“You have to be a bit selfish, and say ‘I am not going to get pushed out of the centre bounces when the game is in the balance, because I am going to make the difference’.”
Cunnington, who turns 27 next month, only talks when he needs to, and that includes team meetings and on-field.
He fends off media requests the same way he does opposition players in a stoppage, as the Kangaroos general manager of communications and marketing Heath O’Loughlin humorously found out this week when we asked for an interview.
Cunnington is shy even when conversing with supporters, as Stevens has seen on occasions, including an instance at the Leveson Hotel last year when after chatting to fans, he conceded his “guts” had been churning with nerves.
He is more comfortable with the three other ‘F’s’ in his life — family, fishing and farming.
Family takes precedence, and there was no more telling moment than in 2013 when his father Alan was fighting for his life after being crushed by a cow in a freak accident on the farm which later developed into internal bleeding.
Cunnington said at the time: “Being a farmer and as tough as dad is, he didn’t say anything and didn’t go to hospital. He carried on and a couple of months later he got a little nick (cut) which created an infection and just from there it went downhill quickly.
“The infection got into his bloodstream and he was just going in and out of (consciousness).”
Just like his tough-as-teak son, Alan overcame that adversity, and has proudly watched Ben’s career blossom with a club best-and-fairest award in 2014, and runner-up in 2015 and 2017.
Ben is now a father to 18-month-old Xavier, and is devoted to wife, Belinda, who Stevens says is “his best mate”.
Crocker describes him as “an uncomplicated bloke who has come off a dairy farm, he loves his footy, his fishing, and his family, and he likes to keep things pretty simple.”
When asked by teammate Jamie Macmillan if he was forced to give up one thing — football or fishing — Cunnington was only half joking when he replied it would be “footy”.
“He takes his fishing more seriously than his football,” Ziebell joked on the club’s podcast.
“Have you seen Cunners’ shed? It is the most organised thing in the world — he has all of his rods set up, all of his lures in boxes, everything is colour-coded.
“He logs every fish he catches, where he has caught it, what the water temperature was and what bait he used.”
The incident with his father hasn’t dented his passion for farming. He and Stevens, and business partner, Rick Jenkins, run Shinboner Cattle Company, leasing 300 acres near Benalla, where they have 50 breeders.
“Hopefully, he has got a lot of footy left, but he wants to go back on the land when it all ends,” Stevens said. “He is looking around for some land at the moment.”
For the time being, Cunnington is relishing the club’s bold start to 2018 and is in career-high best form.
As good as he has seen Kangaroos players who have been “like dogs with a bone” in terms of contested work, Crocker hasn’t seen anyone as natural at it as Cunnington.
“He’s never been a big talker, but you don’t have to be the loudest drum in meetings,” Crocker said. “But one area where he has embraced is the setups on the ground, and he is now talking up a bit more on the ground.”
Just don’t go expecting too many ‘tell-all’ interviews anytime soon.
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