AFL grand final 2018: Langer’s address got ball rolling

Coach Adam Simspon believes an address by Justin Langer was the final plank in planning for the assault on the 2018 premiership.

Justin Langer says his involvement with the club has been good for him as a coach.

Spirit. That was the essential element in the address Justin Langer gave the West Coast Eagles after their final’s loss last year.

Coach Adam Simpson believes it was the final plank in planning for the assault on the 2018 premiership.

Passion is Langer’s default setting. His passion for the club and their task was so impressive the day he addressed the group that it was recorded on camera, digitised and made available for the players to view again and again on the club’s database.

Luke Shuey reckons he’s watched Langer’s talk to them eight times. Shuey put in one of the great finals performances of the era and took home the Norm Smith Medal. Langer has obviously put in an award-winning motivational effort.

There’s a unique bond emerging between the cricket team and the football team. The Eagles clean up their change rooms after a game. They got that attention to detail from the All Blacks. Langer got it from the footy club and the Australian players now follow suit.

It is a symbolic act that says: we take responsibility for our actions and have no sense of entitlement.

On the eve of the match Langer sent a note to Simpson that the biggest game of the year was just business as usual.

The Eagles won the premiership. Celebrated. And then cleaned up their rooms.

The cricket coach explained his love for the Eagles in a call from the UAE where he had been forced to split his attention between the Australian side’s first practice match against Pakistan and the footy club’s biggest day.

Langer’s hesitations about taking the head coaching role was whether it meant giving up his role with the West Coast Eagles board, but he took the new job and kept the old one.

“I used to watch Guy McKenna running around Carine open spaces, I used to do my run around there after school and I’d see him running around there in a singlet bouncing a footy so as soon as they came into the competition and with Bluey McKenna, that was it,” he said.

It was telling after the grand final that Simpson pointed, unprompted, to Langer and his message to the group as one of the reasons for the side’s success.

“We have a bit of a theme about head, heart and guts,” he explained. “The heart is the love of the game, we all love this game, the gut is about the last quarter and the instructions weren’t too much outside of that.”

Simpson explained later that the “head’’ element of his mantra relates to preparation and training.

Simpson said that Shuey was probably a better man to speak about the cricket coach and the speech that made such an impact.

“I reckon I’ve watched it seven or eight times this year, it’s that good a talk,” Shuey responded.

“He spoke about spirit … about his story, his career and what drove him as a player. It’s been part of what we’ve been doing, probably since that Port Adelaide final last year.”

Langer says his involvement with the board and the club has been good for him as a coach.

“It’s been an incredible learning experience for me personally and professionally, it’s great to be involved,” he said. “I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time with Adam Simpson and his coaching crew and to spend time on the board with the administrators, it gives me a broader perspective on sport.’’