Jack Steele’s name will be up in lights this Saturday night as he reaches his 150-game milestone, but the dual All-Australian and Best & Fairest has been featured in the news for reasons outside of the milestone celebrations this season to-date.
The skipper is the first to admit he hasn’t been as impactful on-field compared to the past two years, yet has made it his mission not to let his leadership lull as a result of his lapse in form.
Steele has taken a leaf out of former captain and teammate Jarryn Geary’s book, whose last few seasons as skipper weren’t dulled from a leadership perspective while he was sidelined with significant injuries.
“For me as someone who hasn’t faced that before, I have struggled with it a little bit,” Steele said on SEN this morning.
“I’ve really tried to work on removing myself as a player from the captain of the club, and I don’t need to be playing well to be a good captain. I just need to look back at one of my past teammates and captains, Jarryn Geary, who was on the sidelines for a large part of the end of his career when he was captain and still led so well.
“We touch base here and there and he pops his head in every now and again. It’s always good to see him, but he’s probably someone I that I can lean on a little bit more and ask him a few questions.
Steele has faced his own injury concerns this season after managing an Achilles complaint through the pre-season.
A broken collarbone sustained in Round 2 - in which he played out the rest of the game despite the “floating” bone - saw him sidelined for just three matches, before a medial sprain against Adelaide slowed him down, but didn’t rule him out of any further action.
“I just need to keep chipping away. I’ve had a few issues with my body which are absolutely no excuse, but I suppose they’re reasons,” Steele said.
“Each week I’m starting to feel better and better, so over time I’ll get that little bit of continuity back and hopefully my form can pick up too and I can start to contribute a bit more to the team.
“I can’t just keep blaming these issues because every player that plays football is carrying one or two niggles. It is the nature of the game and it is the nature of the position I play too. It’s a pretty combative position compared to playing on the wing or the back pocket. It is what it is and I need to get on with it.
“I’ve addressed that I’m probably not where I want to be in terms of my form, but at the end of the day I’m pretty happy with where the team is sitting at the moment.”
Steele will have his sights on playing a major role come Saturday night against Melbourne, with his presence in the midfield to be an important factor given the opposition’s stacked midfield of Christian Petracca, Angus Brayshaw and Jack Viney.
A win over the Dees will put the Saints into the top-four, however Steele is putting the thoughts of a prospective tilt at the top-four on the back burner, especially after last week’s narrow win over West Coast.
“If you told us we were fifth at this point of the year we would take it in a heartbeat but we’re definitely not playing the footy that we want to be playing,” Steele said.
“We’re not trying to focus on the ladder and where we’re sitting at the moment, we’re just trying to fix what we can and fix our backyard as best we can, especially leading into this weekend against Melbourne.
“It’s a massive game. We’re going to be ready for a fair contest and it’ll be a tough one, but like I said we’ve got a lot to work on. We just want to get our footy back on track and continue that form towards the end of the year.”
