He has never finished higher than fourth in his club’s best and fairest, never been an All Australian and never won a premiership. He has been labelled “unrecruitable” and “the dumbest footballer of his generation”. And yet Jordan De Goey looms larger than perhaps any other figure heading into Saturday’s grand final – larger than Nick Daicos, who may well win tonight’s Brownlow medal, larger than his captain and polar opposite, Darcy Moore, larger than the crack Brisbane midfielders he will go head to head with on Saturday.
Several years ago, American sportswriter Charles P Pierce explored the way we build up and tear down young athletes. “Vicarious adoration and vicarious contempt draw their strength from the same deep well of the human psyche,” he wrote. Some of the criticism of De Goey has been entirely warranted, and some of it has been hysterical. He was arrested in his dressing gown in New York, pleaded guilty to a harassment charge, attended therapy sessions, but avoided a conviction. There were open letters urging him to ditch his mates, to give up the grog, to drop the kilos, and to fulfil his talent. If he bothered with such things, he would have found himself reading a different advice column every day, often from people who could do with a little straightening up themselves. It was hard to keep up with the narrative. One minute he was feeding homeless people. The next he was apparently a stain on society.
