Kieren Jack rebounds from loss of captaincy to revive AFL career with Sydney Swans
KIEREN Jack is back to his best after injury and a form slump threatened to end his career as promptly as he’d been stripped of the Sydney captaincy.
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THERE were two ways Kieren Jack could have chosen to take his demotion from the Sydney Swans captaincy.
At 29 and seemingly in his AFL prime, Jack had every right to feel disillusioned and lost after being informed by the Swans hierarchy that they saw him “transitioning” into the twilight of his career and hat it was time for Josh Kennedy, a man just 12 months his junior, to take the reins.
After all, this was the same Kieren Jack who had only just guided his side into a Grand Final and agonisingly short of a premiership triumph.
Option B was to cop the blow on the chin and recognise the decision wasn’t about him, but about the future of the club.
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Perhaps it was time to concentrate more fully on rebooting his own game.
The latter is the road Jack decided to take and after an injury and a form slump which threatened to end his AFL career as promptly as he’d been stripped of the captaincy — the son of a gun and one of Sydney’s most recognisable players is back on top.
Against the Giants last weekend, Jack was immense.
In accepting his relegation from the captaincy in a year when he also had to deal with family dramas off the field, the now 30-year-old has exuded the attitude that had him elevated into Adam Goodes’ shoes in the first place.
Chief executive Andrew Ireland doesn’t sugar-coat the fact Jack was disappointed to be told he had to step aside. However, his readiness to immediately get behind the new man in charge has reinvigorated the club’s famous ‘Bloods’ culture when they needed it the most.
Staring down the barrel of crisis at 0-6 to start the season and with his own career in the mire, Jack has gone back to the drawing board and is proving that his influence at the Swans is a long way from done.
“He’s been a great player for the club for a long time and as long as he stays injury free and can get a bit of a run at it, he has shown since coming back that he’s still a very important player for us,” Ireland said.
“If someone said that the AFL competition (would cease to exist) at the end of the 2017 season it may well have been that Macca (Jarrad McVeigh) and Kieren would have been the best to captain us this year. But the reality is they’re transitioning for the end of their career.
“We thought that at this stage Josh was the right time and if you left it a couple of years Josh is going to be a couple of years older. The only way you can perhaps learn to be the captain is to be the captain.
“I think it’d be fair to say that both Jarrad and Kieren were disappointed and would have preferred to stay as captain. But their view was very much that as much as I’d love to captain, this is the right decision to pass it to Josh now.
“You’re always trying to manage for the moment but you also have to have a longer term view. I’ve got no doubt they were 100 per cent supportive.”
Jack played through the early rounds carrying a debilitating hip injury, but Ireland says his influence on the Swans’ play has not diminished.
“He’s that hybrid mix. He’s strong enough despite not having a big frame to mix it up,” he said.
“He’s a strong tackler but he’s also got the speed both ways which helps us a lot.”
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