Sportspeople are either interesting in their prime because they are at their athletic best, or in their twilight because they've managed to last until circumstance and history rise around them and create a story.
Sydney's Ben McGlynn has had a fine career, including 170 games of professional football, but now, in the practice of endurance, he's become a story at the end of his career for the games he hasn't played in: the premierships.
![Ben McGlynn celebrates a goal.](/web/20160927190210im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/2/o/8/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grnnte.png/1474696003349.jpg)
A philosophical debate about the competing roles of fortune and management in modern football has preoccupied me lately, and McGlynn has come to symbolise this strange dynamic as it applies to individual players. He's been an important player to both Hawthorn and Sydney in an era of complete domination by these clubs. In this, he's had good luck as a footballer, since it's much easier and more enjoyable to play in winning teams. However, of the five premierships won by these clubs during McGlynn's playing career, he's had the terrible luck to play in none of them.
Now, this year, thanks to the very good fortune of being employed by a club that is forever bubbling to the surface of the AFL ladder, he again has the opportunity to play in a grand final, which, if lost by Sydney, could be the very worst luck imaginable. Then again, if Sydney wins, McGlynn's story will seem so unbelievably lucky that he'll have trouble recounting how much of it was his own making, or whether he had anything to do with it at all.
At any rate, in the absence of a single premiership medal thus far – due to injury, defeat and trade – an historic anvil has begun to sag from McGlynn's neck, which earlier in the season threatened to sink him entirely. He was dropped from the Sydney team at the midpoint of the year, gone for a month to the wilderness of NSW football, and faced the terrifying prospect of watching his teammates play in a premiership without him for the third time.
It's enough to upset a man if he thought too long on it but it does seem to bore McGlynn, even to be mentioned in this context. There's nothing he can do but play on in his own unique style. McGlynn appears to have loosened his psychological grip on the game this year.
"Early this season I was standing on the sidelines in Burpengary [a tiny Queensland town near the coast]," McGlynn said, "while the boys were at Etihad Stadium beating Carlton. I thought: 'I'm pretty cooked here'."
Next week he'll be back in a grand final on the MCG. Regarding his own luck, McGlynn's attitude, unlike his on-field demeanour, is laconic.
"I could end up a bloke at the bar telling everyone how I could have done this and almost did that," he explains. "But I try not to think of it anymore. I've learnt not to think too much. I used to overthink everything, but now I just do what I do."
On Friday night against Geelong he did wear the look of man in control of his thoughts, and his teammates had it too. There was some kind of stillness to the Sydney fury that looked ominous.
Describing his playing style, McGlynn said, with humour, "I run around like a headless chook. But really, I don't care about stats anymore. I just want try to apply pressure, and if I can do that things go from there."
In regard to McGlynn the player, and his finer points beyond grit and pressure, I can add that it is he who took the best mark I've ever seen in a football match. It's a mark unrecognised because it was taken in the VFL, years ago, but in my memory it is a rolling portrait of the sport's best qualities: imagination, courage, and, as usual in McGlynn's case, a brazen commitment to a collision.
The ball was kicked high toward the goal square from maybe 70 meters away and McGlynn, running with his peculiar bounding style, was tracking the ball with the same look in his eyes that a border collie gets when a Frisbee is whipped over its head in a park. Several players merged on the drop-zone to joust for position and, as the ball arrived, McGlynn rose to meet it with all his reckless, country courage.
He took the ball on his chest, and was vaulted head over heels by the players beneath him. He crashed into the goal square as if he'd come through a car windscreen onto a highway. At the time I thought it was dumb, too risky, despite the drama and outright bravery of it.
That mark is only a footnote, but it had in it the signature characteristics of a player that has proven to be of great value to two of the best modern clubs. He contests like a cut animal, and plays bold around the goal face, unafraid.
McGlynn, in that hard-skulled way, is a retro archetype of the Australian game, having grown up in the dust around Mildura with three brothers, crazier still, boxing him through the early years. He's always punched up in football, compensating with his bold attitude for the advantages lost to him in height and strength.
He had a tough match against GWS in Sydney's first final loss, but on Friday against Geelong he looked back to his best, motoring between the arcs, apparently inexhaustible even after all that's happened these last few years.
Should Sydney win or lose next week, keep an eye out for Ben McGlynn. I do hope it bounces his way.
Timothy Boyle is a former Hawthorn player and was this week recognised as the Australian Football Media Association's columnist of the year