St Kilda’s Dan Butler, having a great season for the Saints, celebrates a goal for his second AFL club. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The Butler did it. Proved yet again that a change can be as good as a holiday.
Different coach, different approach? New teammates? Or pressure – and the drive that accompanies it – to extend a career at the top level?
Maybe it is simply being made to feel more valued, more integral to team success. Regardless of the root cause, numerous “second chance” recruits have clicked spectacularly at a new home.
Of the hallowed second chance brigade down the ages, few rival the coincidences of name and success of Josh P. Kennedy (Sydney) and Josh J. Kennedy (West Coast).
Both arrived at their original clubs with high expectations, the former taken by Hawthorn as a father-son pick in 2006, and the latter at pick four by Carlton in 2005. Yet both struggled for game time and recognition; ultimately Josh P. headed north while Josh J. flew west.
The rest is star-studded history. Both are premiership players, three time All-Australian selections and have captained their respective clubs. Swan Kennedy has three best and fairest gongs, while Josh J Kennedy is West Coast’s all-time leading goalkicker.
“He’ll (Josh P. Kennedy) go down, whenever he finishes up, as not only one of the club’s greats but also one of the all-time greats – his record is extraordinary,” said Sydney coach John Longmire earlier this year of his Josh.
High praise indeed.
While not exactly rolling the dice in the last chance saloon, both players were deemed tradable by their original clubs. They are remarkable examples of what players can achieve when presented with another opportunity.
Take ex-Tiger speedster Dan Butler. After a sterling debut season in 2017 – he claimed 30 goals, four tackles per game, a heap of contested possessions and a premiership medal – Butler gradually lost favour at Punt Road. In 2019, he managed only seven games and five goals.
This year, as a Saint under Brett Ratten, he appears rejuvenated. Fitting in seamlessly with St Kilda’s game plan, Butler has won a couple of games off his own boot and was awarded the Ian Stewart Medal as best afield against his old club in round four.
Playing against Butler that day was former Bomber, Bachar Houli.
Unloved, it is said, at Windy Hill, Houli walked out in 2010. He was embraced at Richmond and became a model of consistency across half-back. Some 26 games across four years at Essendon became, to date, 185 games, two premierships, All-Australian selection, a charitable foundation and life membership at the Tigers.
But cautionary cases abound, too.
For every Andrew Krakouer tale of redemption – a grand final with Collingwood after a prison term – there’s an Andrew Collins (recruited from Richmond by Carlton in exchange for Shaun Grigg) or a Chris Groom (recruited by Fremantle in exchange for Adelaide’s right to draft a fellow called Andrew McLeod).
Harking back to the pre-draft era, there are cases like Glenn McLean.
Famously, or infamously, depending on where you sit, after playing second fiddle to ex-Pie champion Peter Moore at the Dees, ruckman McLean fought tooth and nail to get across to Victoria Park midway through the 1984 season.
After an ugly, protracted and costly legal battle, played out across front and back pages, McLean was finally transferred on a big money contract for the time. It was a debacle; after two games and 14 possessions for Collingwood he was dropped, never to be seen again in league football.
More recently, two-time Coleman Medallist Brendan Fevola was handed the key to the last chance saloon by Brisbane and proceeded to upend the bar, drink it dry and gamble the takings. He was traded for Lachie Henderson who, sober and somewhat more dedicated than Fev, carved out a fine career with Carlton and Geelong.
And spare a thought for Brett Deledio, who desperately wanted a second chance. Not to prove his ability, not for regular game time, but for that old-fashioned notion of team success.
“Lids” played in some truly awful Richmond sides early in his much-heralded career. After promising seasons through 2013-2015, with the Tigers reaching the finals, the club endured a wretched 2016.
A bare eight wins and much grumbling thereafter, including a stalled board challenge, resulted in a core of senior players threatening all manner of action.
“In 2016, the players were working hard but they weren’t having a great deal of fun doing it,” said then general manager of football at Punt Road, Dan Richardson. “They weren’t fractured, but there were some groups within the broader group … there was some internal bickering.”
Only one player – Deledio – followed through. He asked for and was granted a trade to Greater Western Sydney, imagining, understandably given the Giants had narrowly fallen short in that season’s preliminary final, that a brighter future lay ahead north of the border.
We know how that story ended.
Twelve months later Deledio was consoled by his former teammates at the end of the 2017 prelim after the Tigers torched the Giants on their way to ending a 37-year premiership drought.
Two seasons later he was consoled again, this time as an injured onlooker, as his former club walloped GWS to take out another flag.
Deledio was then forced into retirement. The game can be a cruel mistress.
