“Too many times I’ve seen failure as irrevocable and grieved, rather than seeing it as a learning opportunity. This is where it comes back to choosing your attitude.”

This is one of many great quotes within Neale Daniher’s book “When all is said and done” but it’s not the essence of what this excellent memoir possesses. This is a celebration of a life well lived and those who Neale has had the good fortune to love and support him through his remarkable journey.

The first quarter of the book looks back on the history of the Daniher clan which is justification of a book on its own. I kept thinking of John Steinbeck’s book “The Grapes of Wrath”, one of the hardest books I have ever read. Dust, sweat and poverty. The only book I’ve read that made me constantly thirsty! The struggles Neale’s dad Jim and his brothers had in the western Riverina would have been phenomenally gruelling. It reminded me of a black and white western I’d see as a kid in the late 60s on a Saturday arvo. John Wayne playing Jim Daniher a broad shouldered and clearly virile young man, meets the gorgeous, stoic and saintly church going Edna played by Katherine Hepburn and they raise 11 kids, 4 boys and 7 girls on a brutally barren, huge plot of land.

It’s a joyous recollection by Neale and it takes me back to much simpler times when most of our childhood was spent outdoors. Being one of 11 kids myself, you were ordered out of the house by mum. “Get home before dark!”. We played sport, invented games and got into strife. I noticed going through Neale’s favourite song selections at the end of the book he mentioned “Pyro” by the Kings of Leon dedicated to his sister Fiona who burnt down her Grandpa’s old home. I did the same to our backyard shed playing with matches when I was about 4. I can still hear my next older brother Neil encouraging my dad to beat the living suitcase out of me whilst the neighbours and fire brigade did their best to extinguish it.

For all of us our values and beliefs start at home. Neale’s parents Jim and Edna instilled morals and work ethic into their children that have set them up for life. The affection and admiration Neale has for them jumps out from the book as does his love for his siblings. The other significant influence in Neale’s life is his wife Jan and he lovingly writes about her resilience and caring nature. Together they have raised a beautiful family over the last 33 years.

Neale moved onto boarding school in Goulburn initially then onto Assumption College in Kilmore Victoria where he could follow his passion for aussie rules. Already an accomplished cricketer, it was footy that drove him and under the tutelage of the great Ray Carroll at Assumption, Neale became a standout footballer in readiness for the VFL. From there it was inevitable he was going to make it, just a matter of where. Ungarie came under the South Melbourne recruiting zone and that was where his older brother Terry was already playing. When Terry was suddenly traded to Essendon, Neil found himself there as a 19 year old and his eyes lit up on high beam.

Neale refers throughout the book to an existential passage, survive, strive, thrive and arrive.

It’s a common thread and Neale uses it as an anchor to check in whilst describing his experiences. It’s an excellent reference point and reminded me of another similar process designed by Dr Bruce Tuckman in the 60s called strangely enough, the Tuckman Model. It’s more connected to high performing teams, which when bought into by teams, can become a great reference/check point to see whether we are aligned/what we can do better. Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing is the cycle.

It’s fair to say Neale was in survival mode when he got to his first preseason but soon found himself striving (his natural default behaviour) and then thriving. So well did he thrive in his first 2 years he was inundated with VFL and media awards, followed by Kevin Sheedy handing over the captaincy to him at the age of 21. Given he was surrounded by older “warhorse” team mates who were a tad rough around the edges, including his brother, this was a massive challenge and put him right back at “survive”. Then came the torn ACL’s, 3 of them. Throw in a shoulder reconstruction and you’ve got yourself a shit time at a footy club, let alone one of the biggest and prestigious in the land. 

According to Alcoholics Anonymous, self- pity is “like wetting your pants in the winter. A very warm feeling for a very short time.”

Neale’s great strength has been to reframe adversity and turn it into opportunity. From there it’s possible to transcend into a better version of yourself. After the disappointment of his dodgy knees, Neale was at Essendon to support Terry as he held 2 x premiership cups up in 1984/85 and was on the coaching panel in 1993 when his younger brother Chris played in an Essendon premiership. Be less self and more selfless.

In 1990 Neale remarkably got through a season of reserves and senior footy at Essendon but by his own admission, he was done and dusted. He did however get to play with his 3 brothers for Essendon and again when NSW shocked the Victorian team in a state of origin upset. In 1991 he was coaxed down to my club Werribee by coach Leon Harris and his trusty assistant Bernie “Nutty Professor” Sheehy. He played a big part in getting us into a grand final and according to the book he and Jan had a fantastic year at our “country club in the city”. Certainly those friendships have remained over the years.

IT was Neale’s chosen field throughout those semi- professional years, but the game was turning fully professional and Neale was offered the assistant coaching role at the newly formed Fremantle FC in 1995. By this time Neale was thriving and by being able to combine his analytical skills and footy “nouse”, found himself inadvertently preparing for a bigger role. What was making life even more enjoyable was that Jan was loving life in WA, but in 1998 Neale accepted the senior coaching role at Melbourne FC which would last 8 years. The story of Neale’s time at Melbourne is fascinating, particularly if you love your footy, and making a grand final in 2000 was an outstanding achievement given the challenges he details in the book. In these chapters as coach, you can see the other side of Neale Daniher as the reality of coaching takes hold and like all of us who have coached, no matter what level, all rational thought can sometimes go out the window! My old team mate at Werribee Michael “Mixer” McMaster, a close friend of Neale, was runner for him at Melbourne and has told me the stories of Neale regularly stripping paint off the walls of the MCG changerooms!

The Melbourne experience ended disappointingly. Neale’s response was, “even though it’s a big ask, we need to choose acceptance and forgiveness because it frees us to move forward; if we don’t , we run the risk of staying trapped in the past. We become the victim of circumstances, clinging to our entitlement to feel aggrieved.”

After helping to set up the AFL Coaches Association in 2008, Neale was drawn back to WA, this time in a football director’s role with the West Coast Eagles. After winning the flag in 2006 the club was culturally in turmoil due to the drug related behaviour of several players. It took a couple of years to “cleanse” the place but Neale played a big part in re-setting the values and behaviours that make the Eagle the powerhouse they are today. 

Unfortunately in 2013 Neale was diagnosed with MND. Life expectancy for MND is on average 27 months. Just over 6 years later, Neale’s fund raising efforts with his team at FightMND has amassed almost $50m. By all accounts a cure is definitely attainable. Neale may not be here when it happens but he’ll be cheering from up above.

This book is not a “preachy” guide to a good life, despite the fact that Neale’s Melbourne boys nicknamed him “The Reverand”! The deeper I got into it, the more I thought it could be used for academic purposes. My partner Lynda, a teacher of 30 years and with a Masters in Literacy is going to read it next so it will be interesting to hear what she thinks. It’s beautifully written and the beauty of what Neale is saying is in its simplicity and clarity. 

I could see this used in secondary schools and within management teams in the big global companies I once worked for. After 30 years of training, workshops, seminars etc I remember very little from my time in global companies managing teams. Most of the exceptional results came from relationships, clear expectations, great communication, trust, and open and honest feedback. Common sense really. I noted this bit from the book that resonates with me:

Individuals become teams through disciplined and spirited action. The discipline is enacted when individuals commit to shaping a common purpose, agree on performance goals, define and buy into a game plan, develop complimentary skills and hold themselves mutually accountable for delivering results. But here’s the secret.  I believe that for any team to be truly high performing, this discipline action needs to be overlaid with a ‘spirit’. It’s a less measurable ingredient that all great teams develop, and unfortunately you can’t buy it off the shelf.

Spirit emerges through time spent together, which allows all team members to build a high level of trust and respect. It happens when each member is there for the right purpose: the agreed team purpose. This level of trust allows members to manage conflict and resolve issues that emerge in all teams, because there is a genuine commitment to find the right answers and make team-first decisions. If the spirit is there, all issues are dealt with in an open, respectful manner and commitment to the common cause is built upon, not eroded. When the team commits to decisions and standards of performance, the members have no issue in holding one another accountable. The development of trust, respect, commitment, resilience, hope and faith engenders a spirit within a team that eventually leads to love, a genuine care, concern and compassion for the welfare of all team members.

Neale ends the book with a heart- felt letter to his grandchildren. He has just the one currently, Cooper and he has wisely addressed his words to all his future grandchildren not just Cooper. The reason I think its wise, is that when my eldest daughter Corrie was born in East Fremantle in 1995, my poor ex-wife Tina underwent a very painful, extended labour that ended in an emergency caesarean. Given I had a lot of down time combined with fundamentally freaking out, I wrote a diary to my unborn child explaining the events and thoughts. It was an impassioned piece of work and when I presented it to Corrie on her 15th birthday along with the newspapers I bought her on the day, she was overwhelmed and grateful that I’d thought to do it. Only problem was, I forgot to do it 4 years later in Melbourne for my youngest daughter Mia’s birth! Given Tina was going to have a planned caeser, all I had to do was wait for the call and witness the birth. I must have been distracted by a New Idea article in the hospital waiting room, because I went blank at such a routine procedure. Mia’s never let me forget it. But I digress.

Perhaps a third of the book is footy specific, the rest is life. There’s something in it for everyone. Men, women, children, workplaces, schools and sporting teams. It’s raised subjects that I’ve personally been thinking about more acutely over the past few years dealing with personal tragedies and workplace challenges. We grow through what we go through. So as a result I’ve decided to focus on a purpose I believe in and what I enjoy doing, travel, writing, health, the arts and working with the disadvantaged. So here’s the plan! I’ve got a job 3 days a week driving a bus for a group of intellectually disabled in Melbourne’s east, started a small distribution business to keep the wolves from the door, enrolled as an Extra for an agency doing film and tv and in 3-5 years will use my super to travel overseas and volunteer indefinitely with Lynda! There…I feel better already!

Whilst doing that I’m going to do everything I can to strengthen the bonds with those I love.

“When all is said and done” isn’t just a book for dad, it’s for the entire family. Its authentic, funny, insightful and will stand the test of time. So has Neale reached his “arrival?” You’ll have to read the book but until then, as Neale always says, “play on”.

To donate to FightMND please go to https://fightmnd.org.au

Neale was chosen as Victorian of the Year in 2019 and received an Order of Australia. He didn’t quite make the final cut for next year’s Australian of the Year, not that it would concern him. Had he got there you know would have treated the occasion with the grace and humility we have come to know from Neale, however I have also seen Neale’s competitive spirit up close at Werribee FC. As I wrote this I had a vision of him lining up in Canberra about to hear Scomo announce the winner and Neale silently saying to himself, “I’ve got this.”

Merry Xmas and count your blessings.