magic - the age

[ramjet21]

Pie with touch of Magic
By Stephen Rielly
June 9 2002


In the company of strangers, some of whom had the power to
determine his football future, Leon Davis was quiet to the point of worrying silence.

His hushed, monosyllabic reticence - born of shyness, it was
understood - unnerved quite a few of the men whose job it is to
assess young footballers.

Moreover, Davis was small (178 centimetres) and slight (68
kilograms), like another young Aboriginal boy from the wheat-belt
of Western Australia who was being considered for selection; his
good friend Chance Bateman.

It was undeniable that the ball sat beautifully in Davis' hands and there was a superb turn of speed to admire. The depth on his kick wasn't great but the creative precision of it was, almost as good, in fact, as the instinctive, other-worldly sense of awareness that often distinguished him in his Perth or Western Australian jumpers.

But at the 1999 AFL draft camp, Davis appeared to be so uncomfortable and, as some thought, reluctant that his prospects were reduced in one instance to this blunt sentence: "Unlikely to
leave Perth and serious doubts on capacity to settle in unfamiliar environment outweigh ability to play."

Now that Davis is one of the most damaging small forwards in the league and only weeks away from becoming the first Aborigine to play 50 matches for Collingwood, the fact that 33 players were drafted ahead of him in 1999 seems foolish, the risk then associated with his name the mistake of people for whom racial
stereotypes still serve a purpose.

But it would not be a fair account of the opening to the Davis story, which also involves good fortune and the Collingwood assistant coach Michael Broadbridge.

Before joining Collingwood in 1999, Broadbridge coached the Western Australian under-18 team, which included Davis, Bateman, Darren Glass, Scott Stevens, Paul Hasleby, Brett Johnson, Robert Haddrill, Ricky Mott, Ryan Hargrave and Ben Cunningham, to victory over Victoria Metro in the national final.

Broadbridge was instrumental in Collingwood's decision to recruit Davis, but the club, like most others, was wary and did not do so before selecting Josh Fraser, Danny Roach and Rhyce Shaw, whom Davis had successfully tagged in the final. If many were dubious, the Magpies were hardly certain themselves.

It was, as the club now concedes, Broadbridge's association with Davis that convinced them to buy what others were prepared to leave on the shelf.

"Look, everyone knew he could play, but I suppose I knew things about his character that might have been camouflaged," Broadbridge said.

"He was a football junkie. He was punctual and sharp and he had a mind to get things done, which is not always seen in 17 year-olds. I don't think he did want to leave Western Australia but that didn't mean he wouldn't."

Not widely known, either, it seems was the fact that Davis' parents, Trevor and Nancy, were ambitious for their five children to pursue their sports. The family had moved from the small
farming town of Northam (pop: 3500) to Perth several years earlier for this purpose and relocated again, this time to Melbourne, in Leon's first year with Collingwood.

If there was a moment when the suspicion about Davis' ability to cope without the close support of family arose, it was at the end of his first season with the Magpies when Nancy asked him whether he wanted to return to Western Australia as the rest of the family was about to do.

"I didn't want to go. I sort of decided that it was time to stand on my own," said Davis, who now lives with his older brother, Trevor junior in the Northcote house of former Western Bulldog and Carlton flanker Alan Thorpe.

"Mum wasn't pressuring me to go back home. She was just asking the question, giving me the choice. That was all. I was missing my friends and I was going to miss my family but it was time I did my own thing."

Playing 15 games in that first season, mostly from the interchange bench, may or may not have been a calculated inducement from coach Mick Malthouse, but Davis was undoubtedly enticed by being kept at the heart of the buzz building at Collingwood.

Of course, Collingwood mania has been the ruin of many, not least the impressionable young, but a boldness in Davis - the player and the person - began to emerge as his familiarity grew.

Of all people, the ubiquitous Eddie McGuire was one of the first people to recognise this more direct aspect to his manner and Daryn Cresswell, Nathan Buckley's minder at Colonial Stadium last round, perhaps the latest.

Davis sat Cresswell on his rear with a show of strength in the final quarter that was incidental to the result but symbolised a streak in his play that now confounds his once "small, slight and
quiet" reputation. The ball was trickling over the boundary line. The contact was a statement, if not for his own good, then for the hounded Buckley's.

A conversation he sought with McGuire is also instructive.

Davis is known as "Magic" at Collingwood, a name given to him by Malthouse, who coached the gifted Northern Territory footballer, Michael "Magic" McLean, at Footscray in the 1980s. McGuire, however, with his penchant for 1970s' vernacular, preferred "Neon Leon" until Davis, who dislikes the moniker, told him so.

"Yeah, I had a word with him. I'm not keen on it. He (Eddie) was pretty good about it," said Davis, who, at 20 (he celebrates his 21st birthday next Sunday), is clearly emerging as a central figure in Collingwood's renaissance.

He has kicked four goals in each of the past two matches and has begun to spend more time further from goal where he played much of his football as a junior.

It could also be argued that as he plays his role in changing Collingwood, so Collingwood and football are changing him in ways that very few, if any, were able to imagine only three years ago.

[Joel]

Fascinating story. A good read actually, great to read about Leon.

JDF

[MagpieMad]

MAGIC!!